Lee Murray Gets Ten Years in a Moroccan Prison for UK Robbery

From the BBC:

Cage-fighter Lee Murray has been jailed for 10 years in Morocco for his part in the £53m Securitas robbery in Kent in February 2006.

Last year his best friend Paul Allen was jailed in the UK for 18 years for his role in the crime, which was Britain’s biggest robbery, and five other men have been convicted and jailed.

…

Roger Coutts, later jailed for at least 15 years for his part in the robbery, told the Old Bailey: “Lee Murray has security firms, he runs doormen, he has flash cars and he is a well known drug dealer, everyone knows it. He’s a gangster.”

They also discuss his fighting career and how it was derailed:

In 2004 he challenged the American Jorge Rivera at the Ultimate Fighting Championship 46 tournament in Las Vegas.
Murray returned victorious and in November 2004 was matched against Brazil’s Anderson Silva, who has since gone on to be one of the world’s best pound-for-pound cage-fighters. Murray went the distance but lost.

However soon afterwards Murray was convicted of committing grievous bodily harm in a road rage attack.

This led to a refusal by the US authorities to give him a visa, which prevented him fighting in America and making the breakthrough to the big-money fights.

Murray was also arrested and questioned twice in connection with the murder of Sabina Rizvi, 25, shot dead in Bexleyheath, Kent, in March 2003 after her boyfriend was involved in a row over a car.

Lee Murray was a very gifted MMA fighter. He combined speed, power and agility in a frightening combination. His striking and submission games were both to be feared. He went the distance with Anderson Silva and unlike three of the last five UFC middleweight title contenders, Anderson wasn’t able to coast for a minute of that fight.

Had Murray been able to stay on the straight and narrow he could very well be on top of the MMA world today.

But Lee Murray chose to take his life in a very different direction.

I’ve posted his classic 2004 battle with Anderson Silva in the full entry.

Soon to be a major motion picture.

HT RealIrish

Nate Wilcox

Nate Wilcox is the founding editor of BloodyElbow.com. As such he has hired every editor and writer to work for the site. Wilcox’s writing for BE is known for its emphasis on MMA history, the evolution of fighting techniques and strong opinions. Wilcox developed the SBN MMA consensus rankings which were featured in USA Today from 2009 to 2011. Before founding BE, Wilcox was a political operative working for such figures as Senators John Kerry and Mark Warner and an early political blogger. He is the co-author of Netroots Rising, a history of the political blogosphere from 2003 to 2007. Wilcox also hosts the Let It Roll podcast on music history for the Pantheon Podcast Network.

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