Looks a lot like "robber fly", Promachus hinei, or one of its cousins.
hortster

Here is a link that might be useful:

Thank you hortster for the name and link. I looked at some pictures of various robber flies, including the one in the link provided here and the features look similar.

I had looked at some wasp pictures and thought they looked somewhat similar to this insect, but those wasps that I saw had long antennae, which this one doesn't seem to have and is why I was having doubts on it being that.

Absolutely a robber fly.

Robber fly. When I was a young kid, I used to walk a well worn dirt path at my Grandmother's farm. These robber flies would always sit in the middle of the path and take wing as I approached. They would fly straight away from me as if they wanted to remain within the boundaries of the path. Their flight would cause them to encounter other robber flies that had their own spot staked out in the path. Sometimes two or more of the robber flies would seem to attack each other as one of them flew into the other's space (but maybe they were not fighting). The encounters were fun to watch (at that age) because of the speed with which these critters can move. I never saw one of these conflicts result in a death or injury, but from all the buzzing of wings and thrashing around on the ground, you might have expected to see some loose wings or legs afterward. One of my friends had a robber fly alight on his leg once and instead of shooing it away, just let it stay where it alit. After about a minute, my friend swatted at the fly exclaiming "It bit me". It left no mark so I don't know if he was actually bitten or if he just said that. And, his swat did not connect, as I said, they are fast.