Wes Watson’s Police Bodycam Nightmare – IronMag Bodybuilding & Fitness Blog

by Christian Duque

I must say that I find it quite fascinating that somebody who allegedly did 10 years in prison would talk so much to law enforcement knowing that every single word and every single facial expression, hand gesture, etc will be on video to later be scrutinized by the State and the Court. It is mind boggling to me because as I’m watching the body cam footage of the Wes Watson/Elev8tion Fitness video put out by the great Jon Bravo of Jon Bravo Films.

I am at a loss for words. It seems to me that there was a lot of lying that took place for this video. I believe that Wes and his co defendants tried to pull a fast one over the responding police officers. But they were onto them from the get go. I will break my points down succinctly in this article for you, which as I write it, it’s Saturday night, March 15th. I have watched the body cam video no less than a dozen times in bits and pieces. I simply can’t put the phone down because I cannot believe what an idiot Wes Watson is. And I also feel awful for his attorney and hope that he got a good retainer up front because this case will definitely be one where he will have his work cut out for him. In any event let’s do a deep dive into the body cam video released by Jon Bravo Films just hours ago .

OK, so for starters, the video shows us absolutely everything there is to see about the scene after the fact. Back on New Year’s Day. I had made mention that when we got the body cam footage we would have all of the information we needed to understand what really happened. Moreover,.I think that if we can get dashcam video, we can also listen to the reflections of each member of law enforcement with regards to the information presented by the defendant and the victim. That being said, on New Year’s Day, everybody was going by what the owner of Elev8tion Fitness, Angel Bajeda, was saying on the StrengthAddicts Instagram page. Bajeda was so convincing he was even able to convince highly-respected members of our community like Marc Lobliner and Chris McKenzie. Bajeda insisted that Wes acted in self-defense and that the police saw the video and saw no problem with it. Those are LIES!! He even stated he would repeat these LIES in court, saying “I know how this works.”

Now, after we have the charging information from the State of Florida, the police report, and the bodycam footage, we know that everything that the owner of Elev8tion Fitness said on the StrengthAddicts Instagram and later told Jon for his video, was a complete lie. Not only that, but if you want to dig deeper, let’s do it!

During the video, a staff member of the gym wearing an Elev8tion T-shirt and talking to someone on a cell phone, approached one of the law enforcement officers asking them to instruct the victim to erase the footage from his phone. The officer told them that he was not going to do that. Then the gym associate asked the officer if he could ask the victim instead of telling him to erase the footage. The law enforcement officer would not comply with that request, either. And what is interesting is that later in the bodycam footage, one of the police officers is heard saying “did a manager kick the victim on the floor?”

This is very damaging for the gym in terms of liability because not only did they know that something like this could happen and didn’t stop it, but if their own manager was involved in the jumping, then they are on the hook far more than I initially thought. And it’s wild to me that anyone would ask a law enforcement officer – on video no less – to destroy evidence of a crime. That is exactly what Elev8tion Fitnwess was trying to do. And it’s ALL captured on video.

What is also caught on video is just how out of control Wes Watson was. He even asked one of the law enforcement officers if they had ever had a gun pointed at them. That is absolutely insane and totally unacceptable. In another instance, Watson yelled at a female police officer, stating that he was famous. The way that Wes said it made it, seemed like he thought the woman was a dolt. The gun question was a pitiful attempt at making himself seem tough while exhibiting clearly diva-like qualities. He also demanded that the officers put things in their reports that simply didn’t happen. His co-defendants also tried to say that they didn’t make contact even though officers disagreed and pointed to video evidence. There were a lot of lies told by Watson and his.co-defendants. Ultimately, when Wes figured that he couldn’t win over the police officers with his self defense bullshit, he even suggested that he would be friends with the victim so long as he wouldn’t press charges.

The police officers on their end did a fantastic job. At first I thought maybe they were helping Wes concoct a defense or maybe didn’t take the crime seriously enough. But what they were really doing was playing good cop, bad cop. It was like Jekyll and Hyde. You had one officer laugh at Wes’s joke about the victim having “long girly hair,” while in another instance you had a law enforcement officer saying that he didn’t think anything criminal was going to come out of this incident. At the same time, they were very adamant about the fine line between self-defense and excessive force. Wes insisted that he didn’t care about the fine line and that the next time he was going to kill someone. All of this is documented. It is not taken out of context, It is not edited. It is word-for-word what the man said. And that is going to have an awful bad stink if he decides to take this case to trial. Because while he was not Mirandized, he was also not under arrest. He was speaking freely, all the while knowing that members of law enforcement were videotaping and audio recording everything he said. His lawyer will have one heck of a hard time excluding any of this evidence. But even if they do manage to get it excluded. It can still be used to impeach any statement made by any of the defendants. So if Wes said “I never said I would kill someone,” the video evidence could be used to impeach him. In any event, like I said, Wes was speaking freely and now cannot argue that this is fruit of the poisonous tree. And while this evidence may be prejudicial, it is far more probative in nature. Whatever he said during that 30 minute conversation at the gym is going to come in.

What I also found fascinating was how the whole issue of the gun came up when Wes realized that his ironclad self-defense story was not being bought by the police officers. He then suggested that in Florida sheriffs always say that if someone breaks into your home to shoot him on sight. From there, he used that tangent to bridge over to his fear that the victim had a firearm. He didn’t make any mention of that until about a good 15 minutes into the conversation. And only then did he make mention of it when he saw that the officers were not believing his ridiculous self-defense claims. I think one thing that made them turn on him in that defense was that when they spoke about the fine line between self-defense and excessive force, Wes said that he would keep hitting a person until they stopped moving. That right there is pure assault and battery. I think Wes started to get desperate with what he told the officers and then started relying heavily on the firearm angle. He even insisted that the officers include that in their reports. You can see how panicked and frustrated Wes was because for all of his mumbo jumbo on his self improvement videos talking about calmness and not being a melodramatic bitch, that’s exactly what he was when he was talking to these officers. And they didn’t believe a word he was saying.

In fact, I think he thought he was going to get arrested right then and there because on several occasions he asked “where do we go from here?” And the same thing with his co-defendants. They were very interested in knowing if they could leave, because I think they suspected they were all going to get arrested. Now we know that Wes has been arrested and charged, but we are not clear on his co-defendants.

And one last point I want to make is the fact that the victim was noticeably.Injured. And why do I say noticeably instead of visibly? Because while he was physically injured, he seemed to suffer from symptoms of a concussion or possibly a TBI, or traumatic brain injury. And we also heard the officers talk about the possibility of a brain bleed. This man took an awful lot of abuse. And every time he asked for the ambulance, every time he asked to go to the fire department, every time he sounded loopy when he was answering basic questions – those are all signs of a brain injury.

I want to give huge kudos to my good friend Jon Bravo of Jon Bravo Films, because it was through his time and effort that he was able to obtain all of this evidence. Anybody could have gotten – eventually – but not as fast as he did.He really worked hard to get us this content. It’s unfair and dishonest, in my opinion, for people to RIP off his content and not so much as give him credit or even ask for permission. I think people should go out and get their own content. What I like to do, however, is give a reaction. I did a 14 or 15 minute reaction for StrengthAddicts and I’m also writing this article for Iron Magazine. Once again, major kudos to Jon, as well as BallerBusters. BallerBusters is a network of hard working, driven, and passionate people that look out for the little guy. They fight scammers and hustlers 24/7 and have been a major part, a major player, in bringing to light what happened at Elev8tion Fitness and beyond.

In closing, I hope you enjoyed reading my article, here, at Iron Magazine. I look forward to reading your feedback in the comments. Please be sure to copy and paste a link to this article on all your social media feeds. It is sure to draw up some amazing conversation. And that’s not just wishful thinking. In just eight hours, Jon’s video got over 150,000 views on YouTube. Be sure to spread the word!