Sherdog’s Top 10: Flashes in the Pan

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8. Lee Murray

It can often be hard to pinpoint precisely what led to a seemingly talented fighter’s premature fall from grace. That is not the case with Murray, whose criminal career always existed alongside and eventually eclipsed his undeniable talent inside the cage. “He’s a scary son of a bitch,” UFC President Dana White told Sports Illustrated in 2008, “and I don’t mean fighter-wise.”

By the time he debuted in the Ultimate Fighting Championship against Jorge Rivera at UFC 46, Murray had amassed a record of 7-1-1 while fighting mostly in the United Kingdom; the sole loss had come to talented submission artist Joe Doerksen. It took the Moroccan-Englishman less than two minutes to finish Rivera with a triangle-armbar, and for a hot second, it seemed as if the middleweight division had a new and exciting contender.

It was not to be, as Murray’s criminal activities caught up with him and an ongoing criminal case prevented him from receiving the work visa necessary to fight in the United States. Instead, he fought a Brazilian by the name of Anderson Silva in London and dropped a hard-fought unanimous decision to the future great.

Everything went downhill from there. Murray was stabbed during a brawl at an English glamour model’s birthday party, suffering a punctured lung and severed artery before nearly dying on the operating table. His greatest “accomplishment,” however, was his involvement in the Securitas depot robbery, one of the two or three largest cash heists in human history. Murray and at least five other accomplices made off with more than £53 million, but the former fighter was never held accountable in the United Kingdom.

However, Murray is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence in Morocco for his part in the robbery. In the end, Murray’s criminal career is inseparable from his career as a fighter. Nobody has ever denied his talent, but his addiction to the underworld cost him a chance at greatness on the straight and narrow.

Number 7 » If we examine the entirety of his career, however, it becomes clear the mammoth Coloradan’s actual time as a top fighter was exceptionally brief. He had a grand total of six fights in the UFC spread over more than three years and exactly one win over a legitimate top-10 opponent.