Sherdog’s Top 10: Epic Fails

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1. Starnes’ Running Man
UFC 83 “Serra vs. St. Pierre 2”
April 19, 2008 | Montreal
While most of the entries on this list were mere momentary slip-ups, Kalib Starnes’ performance against Nate Quarry at UFC 83 has entered the record books and consciousness of MMA fans as the lengthiest display of futility and failure in the history of the sport. It lasted for three agonizing rounds, as Quarry chased Starnes around the cage, hoping the Canadian would find the will to engage.

Coming into the fight, Starnes did not look like a world-beater, but he was hardly a pushover. With wins over Danny Abbadi and Chris Leben separated by losses to Alan Belcher and Yushin Okami, Starnes had the makings of a respectable career. Quarry was attempting to put himself back in the conversation at 185 pounds following a long injury layoff after his devastating knockout loss to Rich Franklin.

Starnes now claims he was attempting to follow a jab-heavy game plan that focused around movement on the outside, and perhaps Quarry’s uncharacteristic aggressiveness surprised him. According to Starnes, the trouble really started in the second round, where he almost immediately broke his foot. That may be the case, but Starnes threw a grand total of 19 strikes in the first round, most of them probing jabs, and he looked no more effective running in the first than he did afterward; and when we say running, we mean literally running. As Quarry pushed him back toward the fence, Starnes would sprint away as fast as his legs could carry him, and he did this for the vast majority of the fight. He landed a total of 12 strikes in 15 minutes, almost all of them jabs.

Quarry did his best to force Starnes to engage, but perhaps the real lesson -- as Starnes would now have us believe, according to that interview -- is that it is better to run away and live to fight another day than to stand your ground and risk a knockout loss. Whether that is true or not, the fight gave us perhaps the greatest MMA GIF of all-time.

Let that stand as a record of what true futility really looks like.

DISHONORABLE MENTIONS: Chris Horodecki runs into a head-kick knockout against Anthony Njokuani at WEC 45; Tim Sylvia defecates during his UFC Fight Night main event with Assuerio Silva; Urijah Faber's failed Superman punch against Tyson Griffin at Gladiator Challenge 42; Dennis Hallman’s speedo at UFC 133; Cody McKenzie’s basketball shorts at UFC on Fox 9; Igor Araujo and Danny Mitchell “punch” each other from 50/50 guard at UFC Fight Night “Gustafsson vs. Manuwa”

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