Registered sex offender to headline LFA 21 event in Missouri

Kyle Noblitt, a registered sex offender in Missouri, will headline the upcoming Legacy Fighting Alliance event in his home state on Friday, September 1.…

By: Karim Zidan | 6 years ago
Registered sex offender to headline LFA 21 event in Missouri
Bloody Elbow 2.0 | Anton Tabuena

Kyle Noblitt, a registered sex offender in Missouri, will headline the upcoming Legacy Fighting Alliance event in his home state on Friday, September 1.

According to Springfield Crime Alert (h/t Tim Bissell), the 7-0 heavyweight fighter was arrested in July 2012. Reports later confirmed that he was charged with 4 felonies, including “forcible sodomy – deviate sexual intercourse by forcible compulsion, serious physical injury; attempted forcible rape – attempted sexual intercourse by forcible compulsion; resisting arrest/detention/stop by fleeing—creating a substantial risk of serious Injury/death to any person; and sexual abuse.”

Details regarding Noblitt’s offense can be found on the Missouri Sex Offender’s List (h/t MMA-Today.com)

BloodyElbow’s Tim Bissell reported that Noblitt was “found guilty of two counts of sexual abuse and resisting arrest/detention on August 10th, 2015 and “was sentenced to 7 years of incarceration for sexual abuse and 4 years for resisting arrest.” In July 2016, Noblitt was given a suspended sentence and five years of probation. He also requested to have the GPS tracking device on his ankle removed for MMA training.

Last week, Noblitt spoke to MMAOddsbreaker’s James Lynch about his conviction, where he revealed that he “hated what happened” but that there were “three sides to every story.”

Since being handed a suspended sentence, Noblitt has competed in five professional bouts and won the vast majority by stoppage. He was reportedly considered for the Dana White Contender Series, though UFC officials later confirmed that Noblitt would not be appearing on the show. However, while the UFC has distanced itself from the sex offender, LFA – the product of two regional promotions with ties to the UFC – will allow him to headline their September 1 show.

LFA has not responded to a request for comment.

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About the author
Karim Zidan
Karim Zidan

Karim Zidan is a investigative reporter and feature writer focusing on the intersection of sports and politics. He has written for BloodyElbow since 2014 and has served as an associate editor since 2016. He also writes for The New York Times and The Guardian. Karim has been invited to speak about his work at numerous universities, including Princeton, and was a panelist at the South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival and the Oslo Freedom Forum. He also participated in the United Nations counter-terrorism conference in 2021. His reporting on Ramzan Kadyrov’s involvement in MMA, much of which was done for Bloody Elbow, has led to numerous award nominations, and was the basis of an award-winning HBO Real Sports documentary.

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