Mike Chiappetta • E-mail

Last time we saw Nate Quarry in the cage, he was involved with one of the strangest fights in UFC history. The problem is, it wasn’t much of a “fight.” For whatever reason – and they were certainly debated afterward – his opponent Kalib Starnes had trouble engaging him. By the end of the third round, Quarry was so frustrated that he took to some in-fight hijinx in an attempt to entertain the otherwise-bored crowd. It worked.

Afterward, Quarry (10-2) quoted Rocky Balboa and left to a hero’s roar. In the time since, Quarry – who never seems to be at a loss for interesting stories -- suffered a serious eye injury during a picnic, but recovered. Now, he’s preparing to fight undefeated Brazilian Demian Maia (8-0) on the undercard of UFC 91.

NBCSports.com recently caught up to Quarry to talk about the crazy fight in Montreal, his eye injury, and preparing for a world-class grappler.

MC: Have you gone back and watched the Starnes fight, and what are you impressions of it six months later?
NQ: For me I was just going in there to do my job. Toward the end when it seemed like my opponent wasn’t going to let me do that… I was so frustrated. I’ve always said I’d rather lose by spectacular knockout than lose by boring decision. So when that 10-second bell hit, I decided to do the most ridiculous, stupid thing I could think of and give him a chance to just hit me as hard as he wanted and maybe end this thing. And it kind of became MMA folklore.

MC: Even though it was sort of a bizarre win, was the exposure that resulted a positive for you?
NQ: It really was. It became one of the most watched little sequences in UFC history. For me, that made it so much more rewarding. I’ve been to fights before where one fighter was aggressive and the other was more tentative, and you could see that the aggressive one would get more and more frustrated, and that would carry over into the crowd. By the end, you have a clear winner who won, and a fighter who lost, but everyone’s upset. The fighter that won is upset because he didn’t get to do what he came to do, the fighter that lost is embarrassed, and the crowd feels they didn’t get what they paid for.

For some of the fight, there was a little bit of confusion, and then anger because they didn’t get what they paid for.  But then at the end, they could relax and enjoy it again, because people go to the fights for the experience and for stories to tell. So they could tell their friends, “this guy did this one crazy thing.” To me, that’s the good part about it.

MC: You’re two fights removed from your back surgery? How do you feel physically at this point of your career?
NQ: Incredible. My back is stronger than it’s ever been before. I was sparring a few days ago, shot a takedown, and lifted [my sparring partner] completely off the mat, had him on my shoulder, carried him over to the side of the ring and set him down. It’s been such a blessing to have people like Nuvasive, who pioneered the technique. They took a fighter that was broken and gave me second life.

MC: How long do you think you can fight?
NQ: As long as I enjoy it and keep my body in one piece. I’ve been working manual labor, blue-collar my whole life. Even when I started fighting, I was working full-time. My body has more bumps and bruises than the average person. As long as I’m enjoying it and continue to be successful, there’s nothing like it in the world.

MC: You always seem to have crazy things happen to you. You recently suffered an eye injury at a party. What happened?
NQ: This is just ridiculous. I was at a family picnic a buddy of mine throws every year. They have all sorts of events, like a potato sack race, three-legged race, tug-of-war, that kind of stuff. And one of the events was hitting a Wiffle ball down the field with this oversized novelty golf club. The head of the club weighs like five pounds. We were racing with teams. There was three teams, so one person hits it down the field, and hands off the field to the next person. It was about to be my turn, so I was ready to take the club, and right as I step in, a woman on another team swings her club, and the follow-through of her strike smashes me directly in my left eye. It just dropped me to my hands and knees, it him me so hard.

It immediately dropped me, broke my sunglasses, cut me deeply above and below the eye. As soon as I opened up my eye, I looked out and was seeing double. I knew it was not good. I had an orbital floor fracture. The good news was I didn’t need surgery, and that it would heal on its own. Just one of those crazy days in my life.

MC: So for the rest of her life, this woman is going to be able to say she knocked down a UFC fighter.
NQ: Yeah, she dropped me. It could’ve been so much worse though. What if it was a big guy who was swinging, who had another 50 or 100 pounds?

MC: How worried were you at the time you’d be out of action for another long stretch?
NQ: The first thought after the pain in my skull was, “Oh my God, I lost my eye.” I felt to see if my eye was hanging from socket. Then it was, OK, it’s still there, now I’m going to open it. Everything was incredibly blurry and horrible double-vision. People were standing two feet away from me and I was seeing two of them. I couldn’t focus.

MC: How long did it take to heal?
NQ: I was seeing double for about three weeks. A little bit after that, it began to calm down. In the morning, it was always really bad because the muscles would swell up and tighten again. It was about six weeks before it was completely healed.