MMA pioneer Paul ‘Boom Boom’ Cahoon once fought in the US and Japan but was left sleeping on the floor of a Dubai prison cell
Paul Cahoon
As Paul Cahoon lay on the floor of a prison cell in Dubai, having spent months cooped up indoors, his glory days of fight nights in the USA, Japan and the Netherlands must have seemed like a lifetime ago. The man nicknamed “Boom Boom” was once a feared mixed martial arts competitor and a pioneering promoter, credited with helping to spread the popularity of the burgeoning sport of sheer brutality across Merseyside and beyond during the early noughties.
Now, in his own words, he was “humbled”. Behind bars, he had become the target of routine assaults and was left praying for the day he would be extradited back to the UK to face his past.
The road which led him to a Middle Eastern jail was full of twists and turns. It was a pathway to ruin that encompassed a failed gym, drugs, jet skis, luxury cars, a chance at redemption and a brain injury.
Paul Cahoon celebrates his points victory over Swedish fighter Matti Makela at the Olympia in November 2009(Image: © Brian Roberts)
Beginning his career back in 1998, it was in 2002 the then 25-year-old Cahoon’s talents made the sports pages of the ECHO for the first time as the 14-and-a-half stone Kirkby-based fighter signed with Dutch pro team Golden Glory. He had won seven of his 13 bouts to date, and his career promised only new heights as he set off to live and train in Holland.
By the summer of 2004, he was organising his own events back in his home city. This entrepreneurial spirit was rewarded in spades too as his Cage Fighting Olympics saw hundreds of spectators pack into the Olympia in spite of concerned council cabinet members, with the dawning of MMA in Liverpool prompting one executive to call for a “move away from violence”.
Cahoon would top the bill during three further fight nights at the same venue in 2004 and 2005 while plotting a title shot. The following year would then see him land an extraordinary coup with none other than Mike Tyson being recruited as a special guest referee during a “Battle of the M62” event at Manchester Arena masterminded by the fighter and his business partner.
The star-studded night would also see model Danielle Lloyd featuring as a ring card girl. Cahoon told the ECHO in advance of his most notable commercial success to date: “Not surprisingly, it hasn’t taken us long to grow too big for Liverpool’s small venues. It’s a shame, because we always enjoyed great support in the city. But there simply wasn’t a venue big enough here for this kind of venture. We could have sold out the Olympia five times over and they still wouldn’t have covered Tyson’s costs.”
Cahoon then returned from a year’s absence from the octagon back at the Olympia in December 2006, by now being billed a “legend” and a “pioneer” of cage fighting. October of 2008 saw him competing in Florida before claiming victory within 26 seconds during a bout for the British middleweight title in what would ultimately be his final fight in June 2010.
He said ahead of this bout: “I’ve been in this sport a long time and wasted a lot of years playing around and partying, but that’s over now. I’m settled, have a young family and for the first time truly have something to fight for. This is the next stage in my career and now I’m looking to make a big impact before I retire.
“I want to win and win big. I want to move on, fight in the UFC and go all the way. It’s far from the end, and I’m going to prove it by winning this title and moving upwards and onwards.”
Paul Cahoon was one of Merseyside’s first big name MMA fighters
Cahoon ultimately ended a 12-year career with 13 wins, including five by knockout, and a dozen losses. He would go on to set up his own gym in St Helens but would later cite the closure of this business in 2014 as a catalyst for his descent into crime.
It was in September of 2015 that Cahoon was stunningly named Merseyside’s most wanted man by detectives probing a nationwide drug dealing ring. This manhunt followed a series of dawn raids across the North West which saw jet skis and a BMW 4×4 seized by officers.
A series of cases at Liverpool Crown Court in 2016 then touted Cahoon as the alleged leader of the gang as seven of its members were locked up for a combined total of more than 50 years. He had been linked to a series of seizures of cocaine and amphetamine via shady meetings and mobile phone contact with his co-conspirators, with one of the first blows to the organised crime group coming on the evening of January 27, 2015, as a Ford Transit van was stopped by police on Lunt’s Heath Road, in Widnes.
“Extremely nervous, shaking and stuttering” driver Michael Challoner was initially suspected of merely having no insurance. But, when the vehicle was searched, it was found to contain a package of 248 grams of cocaine, worth between £7,440 and £25,000, concealed behind a wooden panel between the cab and the rear.
This parcel was also found to contain the DNA of a second man, Adam Parkes, whom Cahoon had visited at his home address earlier on the same date. The following day, both men were observed having a crisis meeting with a third male, James Bush, following the loss of their drugs.
Then, on April 27 the same year, PCs intercepted a Renault Megane near to junction 36 of the M4 motorway as it was being driven from Liverpool to South Wales by Carl Currie. This led to the seizure of 20kg of amphetamine, class B substances with a potential street value of between £20,000 and £40,000.
This contraband was found inside a “bespoke hide” which had been created by cutting a hole between the boot and rear passenger seats. The car was said to have been bound for the town of Maesteg and the home of Andrew Rogers, the head of the Welsh operation who would later contact Cahoon wondering where his drugs were.
A third seizure of drugs then followed late on the night of May 13, when Peter McCaffrey’s Subaru estate car was stopped on Crosby Road South following a journey from South Wales. Nine kilos of amphetamine were found inside a drawstring bag in the footwell of the vehicle, with £25,000 in cash. Close to half a kilogram of cannabis was also recovered from his home in Seaforth.
Investigators ultimately identified another 12 occasions on which conspirators made journeys from Merseyside to South Wales, as well as two in the reverse direction. Operation Orlando also saw one conspirator detained as he tried to smuggle two Kinder Surprise eggs filled with cocaine through Liverpool John Lennon Airport in his shorts while travelling to a stag do in Spain.
Sentencing the gang members nine years ago, Judge Steven Everett said: “Drugs are one of the great evils of our society. You, all in your different ways, played a part in flooding the local market and further afield to South Wales with these evil drugs.
“You need to reflect long and hard, it seems to me, on the misery you inflict. None of you gave any thought to the misery you were going to bring. All you could see was the money you were going to make. What a terrible approach to life.”
The search for Cahoon continued over the years, amid correctly-held suspicions that he had upped sticks and moved to Dubai. He in fact left the UK on May 10 2015, three days after he had driven two of Currie’s relatives to visit the inmate at HMP Cardiff following his remand into custody.
Cahoon would take an unusually convoluted route to his ultimate destination, travelling via Belgium, France and Turkey before his arrival in the United Arab Emirates. He was rumoured to be using aliases in order to keep his identity secret as appeals for information on his whereabouts warned of him being a “potentially violent and dangerous individual”.
But nothing was heard of him until August 23, 2023, when he was arrested after apparently being hospitalised with a brain injury. Cahoon spent 374 days in custody in Dubai before being extradited back to the UK by the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit on July 11 last year and put before Wirral Magistrates’ Court the following day.
He went on trial in the crown court this week, claiming that the contact with his fellow criminals had been purely innocent and concerning his friendship with them and his work in recovering debts and MMA training. But, on the second day of the case, he abandoned his story and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply cocaine and amphetamine.
Paul Richard Cahoon
Abigail Bache, defending, said on his behalf during his sentencing hearing on Friday: “He is a man effectively of good character with some old, unrelated matters when he was 18. These offences are nine years old. In circumstances where a defendant has deliberately evaded justice, that would offer very little mitigation. But that is not the case here.
“Mr Cahoon left the UK as a result of a pre-planned job offer to work at a gym in Dubai. There is no evidence that the police were looking for Mr Cahoon or that there was an arrest warrant in place. His decision to leave, we say, was nothing to do with evading justice. He was not aware that such a warrant was in place for him.
“The reason that the defendant came to the attention of the authorities was not because he had any difficulties in Dubai, but because he was brought into hospital having been the victim of a very severe attack which left him with a brain injury. It has left him with significant difficulties to overcome.
“Despite that injury, it is quite clear that he has been using his time since to try to better himself. While he has been in the UK, he has been a model prisoner working in the gym. He has also been working with vulnerable inmates.
“There will be a level of maturity which was not present in 2015. There were no issues with the police in Dubai, and he appears to have been working perfectly legitimately at the gym.”
Ms Bache also said of Cahoon’s time in custody in Dubai: “It is right to say that his time there was far more arduous than it would have been if it was 12 months on remand in the UK. They were only allowed outside once a week for fresh air. There was a three-month period where he was not allowed outside at all.
“They were given no entertainment, no books and nothing to keep them busy. In his view, it was designed to psychotically break people. There was nothing to sleep on other than the floor. It was a difficult time. He was also the victim of a number of assaults while he was in custody there.”
Cahoon also penned a letter to the judge which was read to the court by his counsel, conceding that he had “made mistakes” following the closure of his gym. He also detailed how, following his move away from the UK, he had helped to make the gym in Dubai the “most successful MMA school” in the country while working as a professional coach.
But he described his time in prison abroad as a “traumatic experience”, adding: “Prisoners were subjected to emotional and physical abuse. The experience can never be forgotten. It will stay with me forever. It has humbled me and changed me. I couldn’t wait to see the faces of the UK extradition officers.”
Stephen McNally, prosecuting, told the court that Cahoon’s role in the supply of cocaine was one of a “conduit, using his contacts to facilitate connections between parties” and “organising and conducting” a handover of the drugs while using nine different phone numbers during a six-month period. He was, meanwhile, said to have been involved in the “inception” of a partnership with criminal contacts in Wales which saw his co-defendant embark upon a string of trips south from Merseyside concerning the supply of amphetamine.
He added of his subsequent move to Dubai: “At the very least, the trip was influenced by events in the UK. It is not the sole reason for his departure, but certainly a factor in it.”
Cahoon, who wore a light grey jumper over a white shirt and tie in the dock and sported short grey hair and a beard, was sentenced to a total of nine years and three months. Sentencing, Judge Robert Trevor Jones said: “Effectively, you were a conduit so far as cocaine is concerned, putting people in touch with each other. As for count two, you were quite clearly a leading player.
“I am urged to take into account the delay. It may well be that you had a pre-planned job offer and went to take that up, but there is no doubt that you would have known what happened back here.
“The whole operation was intercepted and brought down. They faced the music, but you stayed put and decided that you would avoid doing that until the situation forced you into being extradited.”