Los Angeles, CA — UFC veteran Tony Fryklund competed for the promotion on four occasions between 1997, where he fought twice in a night at UFC 14, and 2004, while also competing for Strikeforce, Bellator MMA, and other MMA promotions.
He’s shared the cage with the likes of Brian Ebersole, Anderson Silva, Cung Le and others — and was a friend and training partner of the notorious Lee Murray, the subject of a new Showtime Sports documentary, Catching Lightning.
Speaking to Cageside Press at a recent sneak preview of the film, Fryklund admitted that the situation was “kind of surreal. Obviously he’s a friend of mine, we trained a lot together, we bled together in the training room, and he’s one of the guys that we kind of had a great connection with.”
“To hear that was, at first I didn’t believe it, and secondly, I knew that could happen, because I knew what he was into before. I just didn’t know it was going to get to that extent. When I first met him, there was certain levels to what he was doing, and then, I just didn’t— I was like holy sh*t, he went to that level.”
Fryklund admitted that he hadn’t given too much thought to the lives Murray impacted when he orchestrated the biggest cash heist in U.K. history in 2006. Murray, who had also fought for the UFC, was eventually captured and remains in a Moroccan prison; while no one was killed in the incident, Murray’s crew took several guards hostage.
“I rescued some people trying to migrate from Cuba and from Haiti in the Coast Guard back in the 90s, I’ve dealt with some stuff as a wildland firefighter dealing with the Napa fires in California, all of a sudden people lost everything,” Fryklund told us. “So I understand stuff. I also understand when people have trauma from all those things. Obviously getting kidnapped — Lee’s my boy, but there’s also a handful of people that are going to be traumatized from that experience, and I get that.”
“I’m not defending him, I’m just saying, you gotta do what you gotta do sometimes, and we’ll figure it out. I’m always going to be Lee’s guy, but it’ll be interesting to see how I feel after [seeing the movie].”
Watch our full interview with Tony Fryklund ahead of the Catching Fire sneak preview above.
