One of the few radio hosts to broadcast professional hockey games in the United States in Spanish, he embarked on his career after fleeing death threats from a notorious drug cartel in his native Mexico, he revealed in a new interview. .
In a compelling conversation with Nevada news station KSNV that was published Saturday, Jesús López told of the danger he endured before becoming the play-by-play announcer for the Las Vegas Golden Knights games on the radio made the team's 2023 Stanley Cup championship one of the most memorable moments of his life.
“To tell you the truth, I cried,” López told the outlet, adding that the Golden Knights gave him one of the championship rings that members of his organization received in celebration of the club's first National Hockey League title. “I didn't expect this.
“For me, to be able to do this after what I've been through, it's very nice.”
López previously told NHL.com that he had been living in Ocotlán, Jalisco, near the border with the state of Michoacán, and running several pizzerias when a regional drug cartel demanded that he pay its leaders to allow him to continue running their businesses. They threatened his life and the lives of his family if he refused, so he sold his possessions and moved to Las Vegas to start over.
“In 2011, they forced me to leave so as not to lose my life,” López told KSNV.
López told the NHL website that, as he understood it, La Familia Michoacana was the cartel responsible for expelling him from Mexico.
The group made news headlines in December for allegedly kidnapping 14 people, including four children, in apparent retaliation for the murders of 10 La Familia Michoacana gunmen by angry farmers who banded together and took up arms over extortions. of the poster. In 2022, former members of La Familia Michoacana who split off and formed their own cartel include the mayor of a town in the Mexican state of Guerrero, the politician's father and 18 other men.
López got his job with the Golden Knights in 2017. They are one of three broadcasters that broadcast NHL games in Spanish, and he and the Golden Knights are the only ones on the air throughout the season.
He told KSNV that it had been a challenge at first to make a sport that is synonymous with Canada, the northern United States and certain parts of Europe appeal to soccer-crazy members of Las Vegas' Latino community. American football and boxing.
But he said he feels supported by the Golden Knights, who defeated the Florida Panthers at the end of the 2022-2023 campaign to lift the Stanley Cup for the first time.
More recently, the Golden Knights visited Mexico City and Monterrey – the capital of the northeastern Mexican state of Nuevo León – and held instructional clinics in an attempt to attract even more Latino fans.
“It came at the right time because we went through a lot in Mexico,” Lopez told KSNV about his career as the Golden Knights' Spanish-language radio announcer. With “this team… it's always: 'What do you need, Jesus? What do you need, Jesus? said.
“So, I love that.”