From this week’s Crave Online column:

It’s a tough time to be Kalib Starnes.  After a poor performance against Nate Quarry at UFC 83, Starnes has become persona non grata in the MMA world.  His crime?  When it came time to fight, he didn’t.  He committed the unforgivable sin for a fighter.  He ran.

Starnes spent all three rounds of his fight with Quarry circling the edge of the cage, doing everything he could to avoid engaging. When Quarry mocked him by high-stepping and flailing his arms near the end of the final round, the most offense Starnes could muster was an obscene gesture. Unfortunately for him, flipping the bird has never won a fight.

UFC president Dana White made no attempt to hide his displeasure with Starnes, telling reporters that Starnes would wake up the morning and “wish he’d fought a different fight.”

Starnes countered, saying, “Dana White wouldn’t cross the street for $10,000,” referring to the amount of his purse for the fight.

“For him to come out and make a statement like that as though I should be willing to suffer a brain injury while being paid less than $10,000 is beyond comment. How much is a brain injury worth anyway?” Starnes said in a statement sent to MMA Weekly.

The hell of it is, that’s a very rational way for Starnes to look at it. He felt he was injured and couldn’t win, so why should he get himself hurt if there’s not going to be any more money in it for him? As a line of reasoning, that makes sense. The only problem is, he’s in the fight business. Rational thought like that has no place here.

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