soft dramatic music
How do I describe it [laughs]?
Um...
soft dramatic music
This story was an absolute belter.
There's no two ways about it.
It's- it was the stuff that dreams are made of.
Heists and huge amounts of money,
armed gang, disguises, a kidnapping,
great police investigations.
It was a huge, huge story.
The Securitas heist is unique
because of the amount of money taken.
It may be the last time that you ever see
that amount of cash in possession of a gang.
Well,
for me is a very good movie,
action movie, you know.
When you tell this for normal people,
say no ways.
It's completely insane.
This is the most unique case
I've ever worked on,
I'm ever likely to work on.
I don't know.
It's the undescribable.
No one's ever asked me how I describe this robbery.
It's...
It's, um...
I want to say something profound.
I want to say, you know,
I'm sure Sir John will say something eloquent
because he's a master of the English language.
Indeed, this Securitas robbery
was my last case.
It was,
ironic in a way,
to end with a robbery
because when I started
in the late '60s, early '70s,
robbery was the serious
crime committed by professional villains.
But as the '70s wore on,
drug cases took over
because it was much easier
to earn large sums of criminal money,
through drug dealing
than it was through the necessarily more difficult
and riskier process of robbing banks.
Oh, Murray.
Murray was the,
the mover and shaker of this conspiracy.
[announcer] Coming out of London, England,
please welcome
Lightning
Lee
Murray.
[crowd applause and cheering]
[Chris Summers] Lee Murray holds the key
to the truth
of this case.
dramatic rhythmic music
[Sir John] A robbery occurred in Kent.
A substantial amount of money was stolen.
It was all in cash.
This theft
represented the largest amount ever stolen.
The robbers used hostages
as the means to enter the depot.
There are few things more terrifying
than the invasion of home or workplace
at the dead of night
by men dressed entirely in black,
whose faces and heads are covered by masks,
brandishing deadly weapons,
and shouting that you will die
if you do not do as you are told.
And the motive for this crime?
Pure and simple.
Greed.
dramatic rhythmic music
[Alun Thomas] If you looked at it from the outside,
you'd never know what was inside it.
They don't advertise what they do in there
so you'd have to know what was going on
in there to realize there was a lot of money in there.
I was employed as a shift manager
initially on days,
I always felt safe because I fe- I felt
it was a very secure building that was very thick.
The walls are very thick.
There was procedures for going in and out.
I just felt the place was impregnable.
You just couldn't-
you couldn't get in there.
The way I look at is you work in a safe
within a safe.
When you approach the door to the building,
you're visually verified through cameras.
Once the first door closes,
you will be let into a void.
The second door will open for you-
for you to actually come into the building.
I started working at the Securitas Depot
in November, 2005.
I was 22 years old.
To me, it looks like a prison,
a very secure place,
strange to me.
It does look very strange.
When I started at end of June,
it was just a one-shift operation.
Then they wanted to go night shift,
so, I, um, switched over onto night shift.
A position come up for night shift team leader,
which I applied for,
which I got.
Two weeks prior to this event happen,
I started doing the night shift,
which was 10:00 in the evening
to 6:00 in the morning.
[Alun] At night time, we would just sort money.
Large organizations, companies they dealt with,
they would send their takings for the day in.
[Tony] We'd start our first shift.
We'd get clearance to go into the building,
open the safes, get the money out,
sort the money out, good from bad,
what's got to be sent off to the Bank of England
to be burned.
So, basically, that continues all night.
[Alun] Banks would then send us in orders
for what they needed the next day.
So then we'd make up those orders
and send them out.
It was the notes that were the main business.
[Tony] When I first started,
it took your breath away.
You always dreamed about seeing
a hundred millions pound.
And then you see it
and, you know, after a few days
it's-it's just like bricks if you're a bricklayer.
[Alun] You just used to look at it like I would
like a couple of bags of sugar,
that stuff that goes into the warehouse
and goes out of the warehouse.
You forget it's money.
It's just- it's just something that you-you're
using in your job.
suspenseful music
I think most people in Britain
had no idea that there was buildings
which gave no indication
of what they contained,
just blank canvases, really,
outside London in quiet places like Kent,
storing millions and millions of pounds
worth of cash.
soft dramatic music
In February of 2006,
I was a detective sergeant working
on the serious and organized crime unit
of Kent Police.
We deal with
drugs,
large-scale drug supply,
robberies and stuff like that,
so basic organized crime
where gangs had got together,
utilized each other's skills to--
for a common purpose.
I was the Assistant Chief Constable for Kent Police.
I was in charge of Special Operations,
which is all of the assets
that are involved in dealing with major
and serious organized crime.
[Andy] Kent is one of the counties of England.
It's known as the Garden of England.
It's a beautiful part of the country,
so a lot of rural areas.
If you're looking at a map of the UK,
it would be the bottom right-hand corner,
the far southeast of the country.
[Adrian] Kent's a busy area because
of its proximity to London and the ports,
the channel crossing to France.
[Andy] It is known as the gateway to Europe.
You've got the ports of Folkestone and Dover
to the far southeast.
[Adrian] It had some inner urban areas,
in the North Kent area,
so quite a diverse area to police.
And generally, I'd say that the southeast of England
and most of England is a safe place to live.
But we're bordered on London and a lot of London criminals
would come out of London
to commit crime within the rural areas.
So, there's a lot of money in the southeast of England,
so affluence
breeds greed,
breeds crime.
The 21st I'd been out doing raids in London.
And it had been a long, long day.
Come home quite late,
went to bed as usual sort of thing.
But I was,
obviously,
on this unit, serious and organized crime unit.
When if ever there was anything
to-to be called out about,
they'd ring the DSes first
so you'd get your team out or whatever.
Wednesday, the 22nd of February,
3:30 in the morning
my phone went off.
My phone rings.
I wake up.
Everyone has this image that,
you know, in a Columbo moment
I get up and I swing my legs out of bed
and I light the cigarette
and start talking on the phone loudly
while my wife's trying to sleep in the bed.
Didn't happen.
I got up
and cleared my head, you know,
splashed some water on my face,
and went downstairs and rang the number back.
I said, "Okay, what have we got?"
He said, "We've had a kidnapping."
And he said, "But they've taken the guy to his place of work
and they've robbed his place of work."
"Now, how much have they nicked?"
"About a million pounds."
"Wow, a million pounds."
"Where does he work?"
I then learned that it was
at the Securitas Depot.
It's the other side of a railway line
and underneath a tunnel,
not far from the police station at Tonbridge.
I'd never seen a place like this.
Every sense kicked in.
The first thing that it reminded me of was
from some film like The Guns of Navarone.
So it looks like a German gunning placement
from a World War II film.
Very few windows,
one or two of them at the front,
which turned out to be the control room.
So what is this place?
They said it's a cash handling depot
where they count cash for banks.
I had no idea that place was there.
It doesn't really help, as a detective sergeant,
when you're going to a place you didn't even know existed
and it's right under your nose.
The first person I saw was
a detective inspector that worked at Tonbridge.
"About a million quid, I-I hear,"
he said,
"More like twenty."
And I looked at him and I thought,
"You're joking."
And his face just told me the story.
"You're not joking, are you?"
He went, "No."
Twenty million quid, that is a lot of money.
My initial thoughts were: who could have done this?
It must be a professional gang.
They had broken into a place
that was
a fort, a fortress.
They shouldn't have been able to get in there.
But they had.
I noticed they had a
bank of CCTV in the control room.
I had a quick look at that CCTV
to see whether I could glean anything.
And I did not
have a clue
who this was.
soft dramatic music
[Adrian] Like most of us on that day,
we get a phone call in the early hours,
probably about six or seven o'clock in the morning,
before we're quite ready to come to work,
knowing this has happened.
But we don't know the scale of it at the time.
And gradually, hour by hour,
we realized the scale and significance
of the crime that happened.
We knew it was over a million.
Then, within sort of an hour or so,
we knew it was several million.
And then it was tens of millions.
And it sort of grew over the course
of that morning, actually.
The sort of crimes that, you know,
we might see Hollywood filming
don't happen in real life very often.
So it's an unusual crime,
and a serious crime.
Armed raiders have carried out
what's likely to be the biggest robbery
in British history.
[newsman] Used notes from the Bank of England
stolen from this security depot in Kent.
Perhaps the biggest
and maybe the most audacious robbery
in British history.
What I don't think any of us anticipated
was the scale of media interest.
We know for a fact that this
is organized crime at its top level.
This is planned and executed
with military precision.
Six men, some of them masked
and armed with handguns.
[newsman] It's a massive manhunt.
Detectives are desperate for help
to trace the gang.
[newswoman] Kent police now have a hundred officers
involved in the hunt.
Tonight, they said they were confident
the gang would be caught.
[newsman 2] The net now being spread
to trap the perpetrators
is spreading ever-wider.
[Dave] It was all over the news.
There was police cars up and down Sidcup.
Everywhere in South London was getting raided.
You know, they were looking for any-any organization
that was with robberies,
they were turning them over because it was
a massive amount of money.
I don't think his name was linked
to it straight away.
But all of a sudden no one could get hold of him.
Yeah, it went around pretty quickly
it was Lee Murray.
soft dramatic music
Yeah, I was shocked because
he just had so much going for him.
You know, if he was a rubbish fighter
and had no chance of getting UFC,
no chance of becoming
a multi-million-dollar fighter
I'd go, yeah, no problem.
He was rubbish.
He's now decided to do a robbery.
I could see Lee going to the top.
There was no doubt he was going to make it
and he was going to be a big superstar.
So, yeah, it must have been something switched in his nut
that got him involved in it.
soft dramatic music
[Nicola] There always has to be
a villain to every story.
There has to be a villain.
And to everybody who doesn't know him,
he makes the perfect villain.
I've never, ever done any interviews
ever in my life.
Um, because I feel like
when a lie goes unchecked so long, you know,
it gets- it just keeps going.
Arms and legs keep getting added to the story.
And I feel like it's time
to set the record straight
and people need to know the truth.
Yeah.
dramatic music builds
[Nicola] Lee grew up in Woolwich.
He grew up on a council estate,
which is the equivalent of the projects.
I first met Lee when I was 11, 12.
So, I used to live on Estate Buttmarsh.
[Mus] Probably the first time I met Lee was when
I was about 12.
He was a good friend of my brothers.
We all went to the same school together.
It's a tough area we grew up in.
[Nicola] For me, Woolwich was always scary.
So Woolwich was always like
a scary place to go.
And there's parts of Woolwich that I would say normal people
that are not from there just wouldn't really go.
People from outside Britain
or even outside London,
you maybe think of London
as being sort of the West End,
Mayfair, you know,
the very sort of affluent parts
of the city that tourists are likely to see.
But, the southeast corner of London
where Lee Murray was from can be quite
a rough place to grow up.
[Dave] Just from where he came from, same as myself,
same as a lot of people in that area, you know,
you had to- you had to fight to survive.
You know, you're brought in a gut-
you're in a council house.
You've got all the wrong 'uns all just put together.
They go, "Yeah, we'll put you there."
That's lovely.
[Nicola] Everybody stacked on top of each other,
and you're going to find
that one way or another,
you're going to be in the
middle of a lot of crime.
It's normal to know people that steal.
It's normal to know drug dealers.
It's just normal to you.
Like it's normal-
it was normal to me.
When I was 13, 14,
my teachers used to take me down to a pub.
That's what it was like.
It was more like a social club
rather than a school.
And I even remember buying cannabis from my teachers.
So, I mean, if the teachers are like that
and that's the start you're getting
then you've got no chance, have you?
[Andy] What I can tell you about Lee Murray is anecdotal.
I can tell you that he has
a British mother and a Moroccan father.
I think he had a rough childhood.
I get the impression that he used
to get knocked around,
not by his mom,
by, you know, others.
[Chris] You know, if you're not tough,
you might get a few bruises.
But it usually toughens people up.
And Lee Murray certainly
came out [laughs] pretty tough.
Between the ages of 16 and 20,
he was in and out of prison.
He admitted that he, you know, he was fighting
with people from the age of 14.
You know, he was a street fighter.
He-he was not somebody you would
disrespect or, you know,
mess with
because he'd beat the crap out of you [laughs].
Lee was kicking the shit,
kicking the fuck out of people
that were like four, five, six years older than him.
Not just close fights
but absolutely annihilating them.
There was a lot of hype about him,
rightly so though.
[Andy] His best friend was Paul Allen.
Uh, and they hung about together.
He was a known criminal,
had previous for violence and all sorts.
They'd been mates for years.
He was always where Lee Murray was
and was almost his wing man.
So they looked out for each other.
[Adrian] Like anyone in life, you make choices.
And for people like Lee
and probably Paul Allen,
your choices are limited.
You're-you're growing up on the street in London.
It's tough and you-you get involved in crime
mostly because everyone else is involved in crime.
Don't know.
We just come from a different way of growing up.
We're not normal people.
So,
the way we think and the way we think about things
is much different from
a normal person.
[Nicola] I met Lee back in 1998.
When we first met him,
obviously he was really tall,
skinny, big ears [laughs],
really, really slim.
And I hadn't seen him for about a year.
And I went to a club with some of my friends
and he walked in.
And literally the whole club was like,
"Oh, my God, who is this?"
Like he just com--
even I had to double-take.
I was like, wow, is that Lee?
It was like, Jesus, he's grown.
Like he's gro- [laughs] he's grown.
He's got these muscles.
He just completely transformed.
Yeah, he'd obviously got into fighting at that point
and was training really hard.
[Terry] First time I heard the name Lee Murray
was from a very good friend of mine.
He said to me,
"I've got this fellow, does MMA,
wants to box."
"Would you be interested?"
Well, I get phone calls like
that every day of the week.
But I met him.
I looked at him,
upright fellow.
So I done a session with him.
And I see this kid and I thought, wow,
he's as green as the grass
but he just had something.
You know when someone you just like
walk in that door and think, "This kid's got it."
The guy was a freak puncher.
He's phenomenal, unbelievable, natural puncher.
You know, there was no effort,
it was just sheer speed and power,
hence the word Lightning.
And he was, you know, unbelievable.
[gloves punching]
Someone nicknamed him Lightning.
He earned that name,
Lightning Lee Murray.
And he certainly was [laughs].
Put it this way, I wouldn't have liked
to shock off him [laughs].
[Lee grunting]
[Terry] When he started training,
I'd heard bits about him
but I didn't really know him.
People said, oh, he's a bully.
He's a liberty-taker.
No, no way was that man
a bully or a liberty-taker.
That man was a gentleman,
proper gentleman.
If you-if you wronged him,
you woke the devil.
It didn't take much,
you know, Googling to look up
who Lee Murray was, and just,
what a- what a reputation he had
from his background as well as his cage-fighting career.
He wanted to be
the world champion in the UFC.
That was his dream.
He was obsessed by it.
As much as I wanted him to turn pro with me
and kick the UFC in the side
but, listen, you can't wreck a man's dream.
If that's that man's dream, you've got to go with it.
He knew how to train.
He lived that life.
One thing he did, he lived the life.
He'd done things properly.
And he trained hard.
[Dave] I think Lee Murray was one of the only fighters
that traveled abroad.
UK's all right, but it's not giving me exa-
I want to be up here.
I don't want to be here.
And he trained relentlessly back and forward,
to the USA to train with the best at the time.
[interviewer] Pat, who was the first UFC Welterweight Champion?
Who was the first Welterweight World Champion?
I think that was me,
back in 8mm days. [laughs]
[crowd cheering]
[announcer] And now-- [drowned out by crosstalk]
I'm two-time SuperBrawl Champion,
won the U.S. Muay-Thai K1-style fighting
and then held the UFC title
for about three and a half years total
after winning the UFC '16, I believe it was,
and then held it for three and a half more years.
But I think my coaching was
a little better than that.
My team was Miletich Fighting Systems.
Put 95 kids into televised careers,
numerous world champions.
You know, Robbie Lawler came in our league,
Jens Pulver,
Jeremy Horn,
Matt Hughes.
The whole Miletich Fighting Systems crew,
it was, at the time,
it was the Who's Who of the sport.
These guys are the shit, you know.
[Miletich] We-we had a pretty-pretty rough crew.
Nobody got through a week training there
without getting their ass kicked.
I frankly don't remember
the first time I met Lee Murray.
I really don't.
I think I got a phone call from him
asking if he could come over and train,
I think is how it all went down,
to be honest with you.
And then he flew over from England.
[Terry] When Lee first went with Pat,
he paid his own airfare,
went out there,
and introduced himself to Pat Miletich
and started training.
That takes balls, man.
That takes balls.
[Miletich] The year that he came to train with me
was right around 2000.
I think that Lee was looking
to improve his ground skills,
improve his wrestling,
and train with a bunch of killers
and get some guidance, possibly, from me.
You know, in MMA it's one of those sports where
you absolutely have to have good coaching
and very, very tough training partners
that will absolutely kick the shit out of you
in practice to make you better.
You need to be field tested, right?
And that was the only way.
We had the best field.
That's why Lee Murray, these guys, came to our field.
He was training with the best of the best.
It was a rare breed that can survive that room.
I mean I had fighters come
from all over the world who would last,
instead of the six weeks they planned on training,
they'd last two days and they'd go,
"Mm-mm, I'm going back home."
Lee stayed and he was plenty tough to hang.
Lee was built like
everybody wants to be built that's a guy.
You know what I mean?
Super-super narrow waist, wide back,
bowling-ball shoulders,
very ripped, eight-pack of abs.
My first impression was I thought he was,
I thought he looked like a superhero,
you know, because he was just super chiseled.
[Miletich] He was right around 6'1".
He fought at 185,
so probably walked around at 2-205.
Lee's strengths were
that he was Lightning Lee Murray.
He was very fast, very accurate striker.
Lee definitely had a lot of pop to his punches,
lot of snap, lot of explosiveness.
He punched with bad intentions.
He wasn't throwing jabs across just to set things up.
He was intending on knocking you out with every shot.
Decent ground skills,
just lacked in the wrestling area.
You know, obviously he's in Iowa,
coming from Britain.
He's not going to be king of the mat at that point.
So that was his weakest point.
[crowd yelling]
That was it, he loved that.
He loved that-that fear factor,
that getting in there,
because there was so many disciplines.
It's not just the one discipline.
It was everything.
And he loved trying his body.
He loved the challenge of that.
[Miletich] Well, the type of mentality it takes
to get inside of a cage
and fight another person who's highly trained,
you need to be pretty high-strung,
probably pretty highly tuned,
somebody who loves to compete
at a very high level.
It takes a special breed to go out there
and fight and to walk out
and fight in front of a crowd and be prepared
and like, "Hey, I'm going to go fight this guy
out in front of everybody."
It's not the same as someone coming up
and putting you in a position where
you have to fight in a bar
or a street
or-or in-in-in life.
You-you've decided,
I'm going to go see if I'm better than this guy.
Some people choose basketball to compete, you know.
Combat is what others choose.
You know, it's our way of expressing ourselves,
so just a little different mindset.
Yeah, you're not normal, you know.
I always said that.
Anybody who gets into the cage, they ain't normal.
They've got a little bit ticked to the side.
They- the amount of hours you've got to go through,
the amount of training you've got to go through,
you're not a normal 9-5 guy who's going home to a baby,
doing a bit of diapering
and a bit of cooking.
You're not normal.
You're not doing that.
So you are different.
[crowd yelling]
[commentator 1] Those strong elbows to the head.
[commentator 2] He's out.
[commentator 1] He's out. [commentator 2] My goodness.
[commentator 1] And that's it. [commentator 2] My goodness.
[Dave] Lee Murray was hard not to hear about.
It was right about in 2002, we went to Millennium Brawl,
saw this Lee Murray, unbelievable.
And, again, looking for ticket-sellers,
big personalities,
and you hear about this guy
knocking guys out so quick.
You know, that's why they called him Lightning,
because it was lightning, bang, bang, bang.
And he was unbelievable.
When he hit, it looked like [buzzes],
like this old flash bulb.
It's what- it's what you saw, it's what you felt,
it's what you envisioned every time,
crack, crack, crack, crack.
[Lee grunting]
His fingers are like clubs.
His hands are like shovels.
You'd get hit by them,
it's like being in a car crash.
[Nicola] He has the bones of a camel in like he,
his bones are really gnarly and big.
And they're solid.
And when you've got strength like that,
with like really hard bones,
you're hitting somebody once and
breaking their face.
You know, he looked like he wouldn't hurt a fly,
yet he could kill you like an ape,
unbelievable.
[Miletich] There's guys that are born to be, alphas,
like the real alphas.
I mean guys that feel that they run the show.
And Lee was,
Lee was one of those rare guys.
I first met Lee in about 2002, I believe.
He did scare me.
I'm not going to lie.
He frightened the life out of me.
Everyone would be a little bit scared
of someone like him because he can fight, can't he?
You've seen him in the ring, so.
And then the second time I met him,
I see his personality a lot more
and realize he's not scary at all.
Lee Murray's reputation,
he's one of them,
nicest guy in the world.
He would look after everyone.
Like he would know you for a day
and then if he saw you out,
he'd look out for you.
If he thought you were in trouble,
he would come in and he would help you.
He was a good friend.
Anything you need help with,
he'll help ya.
If I knew you and I introduced him to you
and he's see you six months later,
"How are you?
Shall I buy you a drink?"
He's very, very,
very generous, very kind,
had a great heart.
He's thoughtful, he's kind.
He's always worried about everyone else.
When it was Christmas one year,
he just left money on the side for my kid's presents.
He was like, "Make sure he has the best Christmas."
He absolutely loved kids.
But he was really, really good with my son, really good.
Yeah, he's definitely not a saint [laughs].
Lee's not an angel, no, no.
He's a fucking lion.
If you fucked with him,
you had a problem.
[Dave] Lee was always eccentric
so, if I'm sitting here in an orange t-shirt,
it'd be orange flowers,
there'd be petals hanging out of it, D,
you'd look at him and go, "Wow."
[Matt Linland] Aw, look at this goofy outfit
this clown's got on.
Hey, did you get out of the circus?
Is the circus in town?
He just looked like a little like,
a little skinny boy.
Because he's so good-looking
and like flairy hair, pretty boy.
You know what I mean?
Lee Pretty Boy Murray.
Trouble finds Lee because of the way he looks.
[laughs] So, you know, he looked like something
from a boy band and had this gift.
Trouble finds Lee Murray.
He don't look for,
and he never used to look for trouble.
He wouldn't go out looking for trouble.
And I think a lot of people that are bullies,
the typical big like stereotypical muscle guy
who's throwing his weight around,
would see Lee and see all the attention
that he's got
and, you know, try,
try their luck.
And that, I think that's what the trouble was.
You know, a bouncer will go,
"Oy, you, over here now.
Sh-sh over here."
You know, it-it was just the wrong thing to say
to the wrong guy, at the wrong time.
We was in a night club one night.
And some doorman tried to get feisty with him.
And, yeah, I felt uncomfortable.
He was there, I was here,
Paul Allen was there.
And there was three of them.
They started to get feisty.
Well, all of a sudden another three come to six,
and that was it.
He just stretched his feet.
I knew he was going to do it.
I just looked
and it was bang, bang, bang, pummel, punch,
crack, crack, crack.
The first three went.
Then the others come in: crack, crack crack.
It was unbelievable.
There was bodies everywhere.
I've never seen anything like it.
And I'm not exaggerating.
It was a bang.
He was gone.
I went, wow, what, Jesus.
The last one he hit,
and I swear to you, I'm not lying.
I would not lie.
I see, do you know if, have you ever watched a fight
where someone gets hit and the sweat comes off of 'em?
I see this.
It was the guy's two teeth out of his head.
And I kid you not.
I kid you not.
It's the truth.
[Nicola] Sometimes you'd see like
just people after people
just hitting the floor.
It was
spectacular,
something, it really was.
He could beat up six of yous,
one punch,
one, pfff,
there you'd go from here to over there.
Does it make you a bad guy?
Yes, it might make you a bad guy
if you're being a bully,
if you're being this.
I didn't see that side of him.
He don't take no shit from anybody.
And that's it.
Lee's got no, it doesn't matter what you look like.
You say something to him and he's back on ya.
So, is that his fault?
He's standing up for him,
he's standing up for his rights.
I didn't hear about Lee Murray
until the night of that fight in London.
soft dramatic music
[Miletich] UFC 38, first UFC, yes, in London,
the UFC at that time was marketing itself
heavily internationally.
Bring your big stars,
bring the crowd out,
bring the stars out,
get the European folks
interested in what's going on.
That was the first UFC they ever sanctioned in England.
We were like honorary guests.
The first time in London, uh, UFC 38,
I went out to go see it.
[Miletich] Lee was not fighting that night.
He was there with his boys.
The, you know, the folks from London were very,
very pumped up.
And, you know, those-- they're thick in boxing.
You know, that's-that's the thing in England.
So, you know, to have a massive sell-out crowd like that
for the UFC was a big deal.
Afterward, they made an announcement and said,
taking you all to a nightclub.
Fights are over.
We get bussed over to Chinawhite.
soft Chinese string music
[Miletich] Well, we arrive at Chinawhite,
very nice, high end,
very high end, and basically say all the drinks
on the house and hors d'oeuvres and whatever.
[Terry] We went to the after party and we was all,
it was all paid for by the UFC.
It was all for nothing.
There was food, drink-- it was a great night.
There was a few celebrities there off the telly.
But there was a lot of faces there, a lot of fighters.
You had 'em all there.
[Miletich] Tony Fryklund, Chuck, we were all together.
Tito was with me.
[Dave] Tito was the king of the cage then.
He was the man.
I was running around with Lee and I see Tito coming.
And I'm with Lee.
And Tito kind of sees me,
"Hey, what's up, Fryklund?"
Kind of like that,
and I go, "Hey, hey, Tito."
Big mistake.
"Hey, fucking Tito, this is my friend, Lee Murray."
Fucking Tito goes, "What's up?"
I don't even think he said what's up.
He goes, "[mumbling], how you doing?"
like barely says how you doing.
And he just like totally turned,
and Lee was fucking, you saw his fucking eyes go,
oh, you mother fuckers.
He goes to him, "Fuck that guy."
I go, "Ssh."
He goes, fucking knocks my hand away.
He goes, "Fuck that fucking pumpkin head."
That fucking energy was hot
in between those two mother fuckers.
Like when you go, "Hey, Tito, this is fucking Lee"
and they just went, bzzz.
I'm like, oh, fuck, bad idea.
My bad, my bad,
separate, separate, separate.
[Miletich] I think we were there
from midnight until 5:00 a.m.,
something like that.
And that was the first night
I actually had vodka and-- orange vodka and Red Bull.
I had no idea what Red Bull was, at the time.
So that's what everybody I think was drinking.
Yeah, nothing could go wrong [laughs].
Then they turned on all the lights all of a sudden
and they say, "Everybody out," and they open the door
and they send everybody out,
into the alley.
[Terry] And, it was all good, and we all come out.
Early hours of the morning.
And there was a bit of a,
it started off as a joke,
Pat Miletich and all that.
It was a bit of a joke.
Someone jumped on someone's back.
One of Tito's buddies jumped on Miletich's back.
Tito's buddy Beau, for some reason,
I knew it was him that jumped on my back.
And he put his arm around my neck,
and I knew he wasn't trying to choke me
because there was no pressure.
But it was like, aw, it's Beau screwing around.
And the kid was leaning back on the hood of the car
with Pat on the front of him and he's like this.
But I saw this from the back,
so I didn't know who had Pat.
And Pat's in the front.
I didn't know who this guy was choking Pat.
So I go tch tch tch.
And I jump over the hood and slide over, slide in,
and fit right into the,
now there's two people getting choked.
But mine's way better.
I go [grunts], "Uh!"
I pull him off.
"That's my fucking coach."
And then I get ripped backwards
because Beau's arm comes off of my neck.
Pat realizes that he's getting loose so he spins around.
Well, I turn around and they're both facing each other.
I'm looking at their profiles.
And Tony goes, "What the fuck are you doing,
trying to choke my coach?"
And Beau gets to like,
"Fu-"
that far, and Paul Allen out of nowhere blasts him
with a right hand and launches him.
He hit him and he fucking spilled rag-dolling
across the cobblestone in a fucking, in a heap.
I'd never really seen like someone really piled up.
Next thing I know, Paul Allen's chinned him
and the guy was laying down by the side of a car.
And his arm flops out and a cab runs over
I think his hand or whatever.
Like I swear, right as the body came to rest,
Tito like--
Tito sees it.
And Lee sees Tito
and remembered,
oh, you fucking snubbed me earlier.
So right when he saw his buddy get knocked out, he saw Tito.
He goes, "Oh, your boy got knocked the fuck out!"
Fuck!
We're ambassadors for the U.S. now with the UFC,
about to have a huge brawl.
Lee Murray's guys,
him and some of his guys,
started coming in on Miletich's side.
The rest of us came out and started fighting
on the other side.
Instantly, it was like,
it was like a stick of dynamite blew up the whole alley.
Literally ignites into scraps all around me.
I've been in a lot of fights,
but I had never seen an alley blow up like that,
with that many skilled fighters
just, suddenly just kick off,
and I was just stunned.
[Chuck] I looked to the left and saw a friend of mine.
He's got three guys hitting him in the back of the head.
I just run over.
Okay, just start throwing people off, right,
just throwing people off him.
And then someone hits me in the back of the head.
So I turn around, I'm like, "Oh, no."
Now, I'd just gotten an Omega watch,
my first nice watch.
So I'm walking towards this guy, oh no,
you, taking my watch off.
I'm going, oh no, you know.
Like I and I put it in my pocket
and I crow hop. [fist popping]
Drop him.
[Miletich] I'm a little ways out into the alley.
And I look back to my left and there's Chuck.
And anybody that gets near him,
he's just tagging them and putting them down.
He's just crr, crr.
Chuck's going, "Don't fucking touch me, anyone."
[fist pops]
He's probably hit four people at this point.
Chuck, they're dropping like flies.
[Miletich] He's stacking bodies over there against the wall.
Yeah, he probably knocked out four or five people.
You know, it was kind of like,
when in doubt,
you know,
throw a punch.
So then, Tito's running kind of at me
and goes past me while he's ripping his jacket off.
And so I'm kind of looking at him
and I'm backing up a little bit.
And he goes running, and as he goes past me
I watch him go past me and I look to my right
and there's Lee Murray backing up,
taking his leather jacket off.
And Tito finally cornered Lee.
Lee backs all the way up to this wall.
Right before he hits the wall,
he gets his last sleeve out.
And Tito throws a combination of punches at Lee.
And Lee literally just ducks
out of the way of all of them,
bobs and weaves.
And then Lee comes back with a combo,
and every punch lands, all five punches.
And it was just, you could hear bone on bone,
just brutal shots.
Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack,
a five-punch combina-- literally five punches.
Smack, smack, smack, smack, smack.
I think Tito was sleeping from the first shot.
I was standing right there.
I see it, you could hear the boom.
You could hear it crack.
And he went, and he was gone.
Tito was out, finished.
And then Lee started to punt him in the head
with his steel-toed boots.
Lee just kicked him in the head.
I don't know what, but that's the street in him, I suppose.
That's just the street fight in him.
That come to another level.
Lee's straight up a street fighter in that,
when he's in that mode,
he's not going to stop.
I've been in a lot of street fights.
Once you start, you know, jumping in
and there's two or three guys on one,
there's no rules anymore.
[sirens wailing]
[Miletich] So at the time, I got along with Tito great.
So I don't want to see him get hurt any worse.
I trained Lee,
I don't want to see him go to jail
or get in trouble and ruin his career,
certainly don't want to see him kill Tito.
And so I grab Lee by the arms and I go,
"Dude, stop, fight's over, just get out of here."
And then I looked around and I see,
because then the police in London
used to wear the helmets,
the City of Westminster police.
And I see four helmets coming down the road.
I said, "Lee, out of here."
We went, we shot down a car park and we was gone.
We was gone.
[Chuck] As soon as I start hearing the cops.
I grabbed the first girl I saw,
put my arm around her and said,
"Hey, wanna go get breakfast?"
And she said, "Okay."
We just walked right by the cops,
had breakfast, it was cool.
Tony Fryklund and I helped Tito up to his feet.
Scoop him up, mother fucker bleeds
all over my white shirt.
The alley fills with London bobbies, right?
All with their tall hats.
And they've got fire-extinguisher sized
pepper spray canisters.
Oh shit, this is going to get real ugly now.
Not for the fighters,
it's going to get really ugly for a bunch of policemen
from London.
These guys have no idea what they're about to get into.
And I said,
"Dude, do not.
You do not want to spray
these people with that spray.
You're dealing with dozens and dozens
of high-level professional fighters.
Like you guys will get hurt.
And you don't have guns here."
So he goes,
"You're in charge, young man.
You're in charge.
Get all these people back to the hotel."
The majority of the guys fighting in that fight
were actual fighters,
so it probably was pretty interesting.
You know, I mean I threw a spinning back kick in it.
For anyone that was going to cause any trouble that night,
they was in deep shit
because they was going to get in trouble.
They was going to get in big trouble.
soft dramatic music
[Fryklund] I get
to our fucking hotel.
We pull up and I went, oh fuck.
This is not good.
Because when I pulled up,
I knew those people out front right there
were Lee's dudes out in front of the hotel.
Like a fucking comic book.
You know the old London Fog jackets,
the big fucking overcoats?
There's overcoats on these guys
because they've got weapons on them.
I go, fuck, they're already here.
And they're fucking not happy.
But why are they here?
They didn't fucking lose a fight.
They just don't give a fuck.
They like the fact that there's action,
and they're going to go fuck with Tito now.
They go, "Get this fucking guy
to stop running his mouth."
I go inside, I run to the front desk.
Bruce Buffer and Tito are there.
Tito's going,
"I want to know who the fuck that was."
These guys are now in the lobby,
ready to fucking put a bullet in this fuck-
I'm going, what the fuck?
"Get the fuck up-"
I'm the only one that fucking knows this.
Then I'm going, "You guys tell your fucking boy
to go upstairs."
I finally had Bruce Buffer grab him
and tell him to get the fuck in the elevator.
Just fucking drop it, fucking drop it.
[male host] I want to talk about something
that's become a 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.
Not true at all.
Tito has talked a lot about it.
At that point, yeah,
Tito Ortiz is the biggest name
in the sport.
And he got slapped with one combo by an Englishman
in a London alley.
Quite embarrassing, I'd imagine.
Lee Murray took a swing at me,
missed.
I took a swing at him.
I clinched him, I kneed him.
He broke away.
He started running away.
I started chasing to 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.
He claimed that he was wearing figure skates at the time
and that we were at Lake Placid apparently,
and he wiped out in his
first skating lesson against
a skilled hockey player in a fight.
I'm the last guy to defend Tito.
Trust me.
But in his defense,
he was up when I-- when the cops showed up,
and I looked over and I saw him,
he was the guy being--
his buddies were holding him back
from trying to, you know,
chase after Lee.
I was never unconscious at the time.
In my whole career, I've never been unconscious.
And I never will go unconscious.
Now, I've heard all the interviews from Tito.
No disrespect to Tito,
great fighter, great champion,
but man up, mate.
You got beat,
you didn't have slippery shoes on.
You went toe to toe with another man
on the cobbles and come unstuck.
That's it, that's what happened.
Well, he got hit solidly five times
and just fell face first.
Stop bitching and beating yourself up over it.
Be a man and man up.
That's my opinion.
[Miletich] You know, Tito lying about what happened,
that's what made it big.
And it still remains,
why you're here 18 years later
filming me talk about it,
because Tito fucking lied.
Lee was a Conor McGregor in his ti-
he knew exactly where he wanted to be
and he knew what he had to do.
It doesn't matter what he had to do to get there.
How did he get noticed to get into the UFC?
Who's the biggest name around?
Tito, mmm, how bigger is he than me?
Big lump, I will knock that mother fucker out.
And that's how he got noticed.
You know, it was all over the papers.
Everyone was talking about, oh my God,
this little English skinny fighter knocked out Tito.
He was not scared of man nor beast,
let alone the fighting.
You know, on the street, he was not scared or man nor beast.
So he had a great reputation on the street
and in the cage when he fought Pelé.
soft dramatic music
[commentator] He's actually eyeballing Lee Murray
as he comes into the cage.
As you see, he doesn't look intimidated one bit.
Lee Murray is ripped to the bone.
You know, you've only got to get touched by Lee
and that-that was it.
It was lights out.
[Terry] He had that ability, he's just natural.
He's a natural fighter.
Hardest man I've ever trained?
Lee Murray.
100%.
Hardest man who's ever walked in that door?
Lee Murray, 100%.
He wanted to be the best.
He knew the UFC,
I'm going to be a middleweight champion.
I'm going to be a welterweight champion.
That was his dream.
dramatic music
Getting to Vegas was an achievement, obviously,
going up there, them welcoming Lee to the UFC.
Great, great, it's the first time
I've ever done anything like that in my life,
in all my boxing career,
being involved in something like that, in Vegas.
And it's quite an experience for myself.
And then we got to the fight night itself,
in his dressing room, great atmosphere,
pumping him up a bit.
It's your dream, mate, all right?
Your dream, don't let no one take it away from you.
Come on, nobody. [hand claps]
What are we going to do?
[bleep] him up.
It's like me and you having an argument now,
kicking off.
Yes, we've got a pump of adrenalin and we go in.
But put you in a dressing room
and put me in the dressing room.
And you've got to deal with that mentally.
He had that ability as well,
in abundance.
Lee was one of those guys that they fucking really,
they enjoyed fighting.
rhythmic music
dramatic music builds
I'm nervous for every fight I take.
Everybody gets nervous.
It's just part of being human.
If you don't get nervous, you're just,
if I didn't get nervous, I'd be worried.
[Terry] Whose decision was it for him
to come out like Hannibal Lector?
His.
I didn't even know he was going to do it.
I didn't know about the mask.
I didn't know about the suit.
I didn't know about nothing.
I just,
what?
But that was his bag,
that's what he wanted to do
because that's his stage.
And who am I to tell Lee not to?
And when you see him come out with the,
with the mask on with the Lector and he come out,
he knew what he thought, you know,
I'm going to make this UFC.
I'm going to do this.
He had it in his nut what to do.
He knew that's the way to go to be a,
not just a fighter, but an entertainer.
And he definitely got the crowd's attention.
And the commentator is wow, you know.
It was, it was good.
And they walk into the ring wall,
to the cage.
It was, it was phenomenal.
It was just something else,
and he loved it.
He loved it.
You could see, and he,
that was- that was his pinnacle.
[commentator] Tito Ortiz.
And, Tito, I think I know who he's rooting for.
I was watching it on TV, actually.
I was stressed, you know, I was stressed.
I knew Jorge was very good on the ground,
pretty good standing up.
I knew Lee had the edge standing up, by far.
But Jorge is very, very good on the ground,
very good Jiu-Jitsu man.
[commentator] Oh my, Rivera's got a hold of him.
[Miletich] When the fight hit the ground,
I-I-I remember going,
"Oh, boy, that's not good."
[crowd yelling]
[commentator] Great [drowned out by crowd]
looking for an arm bar, look at this.
And bam, out of nowhere,
Lee pulls out a triangle choke and--
[commentator] And it's all over.
It's all over!
Lee Murray by submission.
Well-rounded Lightning Lee Murray shows
he's got ground skills to go with those nasty hands.
And he just, pop, pop.
Got him in the thing, arm around him, done.
You either do or die in there, when you get there,
you either shit yourself or you fight.
And he fought, unbelievable, unbelievable.
When he got his hand raised
and Joe Rogan was interviewing him,
he said, "There's, uh, someone in the crowd here,
Tito Ortiz right there."
And Lee went, they just started exchanging words.
Tito Ortiz, T--[laughs]
Tito Ortiz?
If he wants to fight me here,
I'll fight anybody.
I don't care who they are,
what they've done.
I couldn't give a shit, either way.
He can -
[Announcer] Oh, Tito's standing up.
Tito's standing up giving it that.
And Lee's saying to him,
you're never going to shut me up 'till you get in here.
To say that to a man of his size and his stature
and the lightweight champion of the world,
you've got a pair of balls, mate.
My name's always going to be in the back of his head
until he gets in here, he gets in here,
and tries to shut me up,
if that's what you feel you can do.
That would have been a massive,
massive fight,
massive.
It's just a shame it never happened.
[Adrian] When we look at any criminal enterprise,
there's always a leader or leaders within them.
And it's the same in society.
If you have any group of people and an event happens,
there's always one or two people
who are taking that group forward.
And from, you know, my knowledge and experience
in looking at this particular crime,
there's no doubt in my mind that Lee Murray was a key figure
and a leader of that group.
He was strong, confident, quick-witted,
and he would take people with him.
He was definitely the driving force from the London gang.
He was the guy who,
because he was a bit of a hero to them.
And he was a major force behind planning this.
There's no doubt about it.
soft dramatic music
[sharp exhale]
Um, I don't want to,
I don't want to put words
in his mouth because obviously,
I want him to speak for himself and say why.
I think it's better for people
to hear it from him as well,
why he did it.
I feel like that was the only way
to do it, to, you know,
record, record parts of the conversations that we had.
He's never had a chance to speak for himself
and to tell what actually happened.
He was told not to talk about this at all.
People need to hear from Lee.
dramatic music