« Urijah Faber getting ready to fight at Bantamweight and really wants Dominic Cruz to lose | Home | Another fighter accuses DREAM of being a deadbeat on paying out fight money »
Transcript: Tito Ortiz’s version of the 2002 bar brawl with Lee Murray
By Zach Arnold | August 16, 2010
MICHAEL SCHIAVELLO: “I want to talk about something that’s become part of MMA folklore, MMA urban myth which I want to get you to clarify. 2002… London… Tony Fryklund, Matt Hughes, Pat Miletich, Tito Ortiz, and a man named Lee Murray got into a street fight where apparently Tito Ortiz got knocked out by Lee Murray.”
TITO ORTIZ: “Not true. At all. One of my buddies got beat up, was getting stomped in the concrete outside and I came to his rescue. Me, Chuck Liddell, and Damien started to fight… One of the guys sucker punched our friend Damien, I mean my friend Bo, dropped him on the door, the cab ran over his arm, and Lee Murray was in there. Lee Murray took a swing at me, missed, I took a swing at him, I clinched him, I knee’d him… he broke away, he started running away, I started chasing into him, and he turns around and stops and plants his feet, I go to stop and I slide right into him, he clipped me, dropped me, and I popped right back up. Cops came, broke everybody apart. One of the cops said he was squirt me in the face with mace, I said go ahead because by then I was already snapped, I didn’t give a [expletive], I was surviving, survival skills. I was never unconscious at the time, in my whole life I’ve never been unconscious and I never will go unconscious and… but I think those stories are fabricated a lot to try to build, uh, Lee Murray up but God looks over all of us and now he’s doing a 10-year prison sentence, so karma’s a bitch, huh?”
MICHAEL SCHIAVELLO: “Hello, Lee Murray!”
TITO ORTIZ: “Nah, hey, I think the story doesn’t go any further than that. It was an altercation. I was defending my friend and it was no more than that.”
And then, of course, there’s Matt Hughes’ version of what happened.
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, UK, Zach Arnold | 6 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
He’s lying.
Bobby Razak has it on tape but won’t release the footage.
“I think those stories are fabricated a lot to try to build, uh, Lee Murray up but God looks over all of us and now he’s doing a 10-year prison sentence, so karma’s a bitch, huh?”
God is paying Lee Murray back for beating up Tito by putting him in prison. I see.
“he clipped me, dropped me, and I popped right back up.”
I think to somebody who has been KO’ed it would seem like they just popped right back up regardless of how long they were on the ground. Obviously Ortiz’ recollection of this event is the least reputable.
“…and I came to his rescue.”
^^
I can only picture this phrase being delivered with a straight face from either tito ortiz or maybe ben quayle.
This website, made at or near the time of Murray’s victory over Ortiz, accurately records the incident:
http://www.freewebs.com/london_calling2/
I finished one paragraph before I came to conclusion that there was no way it was going to be objective. “The Lee Murray Fanpage” should have tipped me off.
Agreed…but still, you have to admit that this…
His, ego, ability to sustain a satisfactory erection and face may have been hurt that night, but the damage to his reputation will never be lived down.
…is an all-time classic line.