Veteran MMA fighter Travis Fulton has hanged himself in his Iowa lockup hours after pleading guilty to sexually exploiting a child to make porn, according to officials and court documents.
The 44-year-old fighter known as “The Ironman” was found dead just before 4 a.m. Saturday by wardens making routine checks at Linn County Correctional Center in Cedar Rapids, the sheriff’s office said.
He “was believed to have hung himself,” the force said in a statement, saying he was eventually declared dead in a local hospital following staff attempts to revive him.
Fulton had been in custody since Feb. 19 after he was charged with making two girls under age 18 engage in sexual behavior that he photographed over the span of several years, court records show.
He pleaded guilty Friday to two of the four charges against him — sexual exploitation of a child and possession of child pornography.
The first charge he admitted to was for having “used, persuaded, induced, and enticed” a child under 18 “to engage in explicit conduct” for “a visual depiction,” court records show.
He also admitted to having “visual depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct, including a depiction involving a prepubescent minor or a minor who had not attained 12 years of age,” the indictment shows.
The abuse stretched back to at least 2013, the indictment said. After his guilty pleas, a federal judge canceled a trial date and set a July 23 plea hearing.
He was separately also facing a trial later this year for attacking a woman in September 2019, when his victim “sustained fractures to her jaw, nose, and palate,” according to the Gazette.
“The victim was afraid to talk to police, but her family members reported she said the defendant punched her in the head and back repeatedly,” a criminal complaint stated.
“He threatened to kill the victim and her family if she ever talked to the police,” the charges in that case said.
“The defendant is a self-proclaimed professional fighter, with a twenty-year career, and the ability to do serious bodily injury with his hands,” the report noted.
Fulton got his “Ironman” nickname for his record run of 319 fights, including two in the early years of the UFC. He won 255 times, but had not fought since April 2019, according to martial arts site Sherdog.
The Linn County Sheriff’s Office said his death was part of an ongoing investigation.
