The Top 10 Stories of the Past 10 Years

7. Lee Murray (2002-Present)

If you can’t get enough of prizefighting and crime stories, the idea of a talented puncher wrapped up in one of the biggest money heists in history should be enough to completely arrest your attention. And it did: Lee Murray’s hop from mid-card attraction to antihero seized headlines from ESPN, Sports Illustrated and a full-length book, “Heist,” which documents Murray’s (alleged) master plan to walk away with over $92 million in bank robbery winnings. He fled to Morocco; he was thrown in prison; he walked out of prison; he bought tacky, gold-plated furnishings; he inspired a kind of perverse reverence among observers who had to admire his audacity. Murray is not the sport’s only personality, but he’s perhaps the only one worth making a movie about. And that’s coming soon.

6. The Irony of ‘Rampage’ (2008)

What really breaks your neck in fighting: Saturday, you’re somebody. Sunday, you’re just another body. Quinton Jackson, a man who had come from neighborhoods more dangerous than cages, learned that lesson the hard way when he lost a five-round decision to heavy underdog Forrest Griffin in a summer 2008 UFC title match.

After knocking out Chuck Liddell and knocking back Dan Henderson, Jackson looked to be settling in for a lengthy run: Griffin countered those expectations by pulling Jackson into a dog fight, scoring with kicks and frustrating Jackson with sheer persistence. Ten days later, Jackson was careening down a California roadway, evading police and risking the lives of pedestrians in an attempt to cure his ill feelings.

It nearly left him with another title: the first UFC fighter to suffer death by misadventure. TMZ hasn’t missed a step since.

5. The Death of Sam Vasquez (2007)

For all the macho boasting about killing, being ready to die and training like the devil was chasing you, athletes can’t really take enough punishment from four-ounce gloves to actually expire. (They’ll bleed or go to sleep first.) The two that did -- Douglas Dedge in 1998 and a Korean fighter known to stateside press as “Lee” in 2005 -- received little attention beyond some borderline-selfish fretting over what the incidents would “do” to the sport’s reputation. And besides, supporters reasoned, Dedge and his other trivia partner were halfway around the world. Who knows what precautions were taken?

The death of Sam Vasquez was different: It transpired in Houston under the eye of the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, and at a time when mixed martial arts was finally entering its adolescence. Vasquez was said to have had a blood clot going into the bout; his opponent, Vince Libardi, inadvertently aggravated it, and a comatose Vasquez died in the hospital 42 days later.

The predicted hysteria over the gorehound nature of the sport never came; even bullying journalists had to acknowledge one death in North America after 14 years of regular competition was statistically insignificant. That’s little consolation to Vasquez’s family.