Kimbo Slice, The Ultimate Fighter, and White America
Published by Zach Arnold on June 3rd, 2009 in Current Events

 Print |  Email |  RSS

Six months ago, Dana White had no respect for Kimbo Slice. Now that Kimbo Slice has signed up for The Ultimate Fighter, suddenly Dana White can’t stop using the word ‘respect’ when talking about Kimbo.

Rest assured, Dana White tells us that Kimbo Slice isn’t fighting for money by being on The Ultimate Fighter. Instead, he wants to be on the show so he can prove how legitimate he is. That’s the promoter’s story and he’s sticking to it. Reminds me a lot of when an independent pro-wrestler is hired by WWE only for WWE to tell the wrestler that he/she needs to learn the “WWE style” in order to do things the right way.

I’m sure that if/when Kimbo loses a fight on the show that he will never make another UFC appearance.

Suckers.

“I don’t know how he’s going to do. I got to respect that,” White exclaimed yesterday in a radio interview with Carmichael Dave on Hot Talk 1140 in Sacramento (KHTK). “I tell you what… today was the first day of show. We shot episode one today. And, uh, he walked into the gym, and was uh, let me tell you what, he was pretty serious. This guy, he wasn’t messing around, he wasn’t joking, he wasn’t laughing. And, uh, I don’t think he is a big Dana White fan, either. You know, how could you be, after uh, you know, after all the things that have gone back and forth. So, we’re going to find out, We’re going to find out this season if he’s for real or not.”

For all of the smack talk about Gary Shaw that Dana White has spoken over the last couple of years, White ultimately has decided that Shaw wasn’t so dumb after all in pushing a guy whose act never seems to get tired — especially to folks in White America. Spare me the angry messages and catcalls for stating the obvious, which is that Kimbo Slice’s gimmick is all about being ‘that big, Black scary guy’ who is a backyard street fighter. Throw in a Tito Ortiz-style angle where you have The Powerful White Boss vs. That Angry Black Guy and, tah dah, you have ratings. Throw in Rampage Jackson ‘standing up the for Black man’ and I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry.

One year ago, Yahoo Sports columnist Dan Wetzel described the Kimbo Slice experiment on CBS as the following:

“Kimbo is a guy with unexpected and most likely fleeting earning potential; understandably he’s willing to cash in even if it means tomato-can opponents and an image so unfortunately stereotypical.

CBS is so focused on quick television ratings, it will present a cheap trick, lowest common denominator show. This, rather than an introduction to a sport that if treated with respect and patience could grow into a powerful property.”

Kimbo, who taps into our primal instincts, plays to what many think the sport is. Let Kimbo cash every check he can – good for him – but he plays to MMA’s difficult-to-shake reputation as “human cockfighting,” as Sen. John McCain once branded it.”

Pardon the pun here, but for UFC’s mostly… ahem…. White audience, the Kimbo-on-Ultimate-Fighter experiment will more than likely be a smashing success. So far, the history of African-American fighters as top draws in UFC has been a mixed bag. Quinton “Rampage” Jackson drew big for his fight with Chuck Liddell, but has received a polite but not white hot reaction with his recent fights in the company. Rashad Evans, who recently lost his UFC Light Heavyweight title to Machida, draws more boos than cheers and isn’t as big of a star as most people thought he would be despite his impressive record and highlight KO of Chuck Liddell. Liddell’s fight against Mauricio Shogun last April in Montreal drew significantly more interest than Rashad’s fight in May against Machida in Las Vegas.

Which brings up to an interesting marketing dilemma for Zuffa. In a previous MMA Memories article, I mentioned that UFC has an interesting situation on their hands right now with three strong foreign ‘aces’ in the company. We will see how the company’s mostly white audience reacts to these guys as champions and whether or not they will strongly want to pay to watch them fight. It’s one thing to like a fighter but it’s another thing to want to actually pay to see him fight.

In the case of Kimbo Slice, UFC will end up generating a lot of press for signing him to their reality TV show. I wonder if Forrest Griffin and Rashad Evans ever thought that their hard work on Zuffa’s reality show would lead to an experiment to pave the way for Kimbo Slice to become a face for the company. Even if Slice loses right away on the show, there will undoubtedly be one or two fighters in ‘the house’ who will pick a fight with Kimbo and immediately see it as a quick and easy storyline to set up a pay day on TV or PPV.

The differences between Kimbo Slice and someone like Anderson Silva are many, but the biggest one appears to be how much fan interest there is between the two men. For all the talk about how UFC’s audience is educated and affluent, the fact is that the news of Kimbo Slice signing to appear on The Ultimate Fighter has created an almost Pavlovian reaction from MMA fans. Mention Anderson Silva’s name and most fans react with ambivalence (even before his last two strange fights). Even with a good fight on the horizon against Forrest Griffin this August, Silva is not worth paying attention to in the eyes of many UFC fans when compared to Kimbo Slice.

Yeah, the same guy who lost to “Smoothie King” Seth Petruzelli in 13 seconds, I know. The day after Kimbo’s loss to Petruzelli, Yahoo’s Dan Wetzel characterized the situation this way:

“Through it all Slice remained the only likable character of this foolish farce. He wasn’t the one claiming he was the best in the world. He was just a working-class dude who figured out how to beat the system and cash in on his 15 minutes of fleeting fame.

He’s got kids to feed and bills to pay and right to the end, he was milking bonuses out of the promotion, a one-time homeless man holding the Tiffany Network’s prime-time programming hostage. Only in America.

He was the grand actor in the middle of a three-ring circus, a tall tale that would eventually come tumbling down under the bright glare of reality.”

Except, of course, Kimbo Slice reportedly earned a salary in the high six-figures to fight Petruzelli at the last minute. However, that reported fact doesn’t fit into the Kimbo Slice persona — just look at his comments on a recent Dana White YouTube video talking about how he “needs to feed his family.” Channeling the spirit of Latrell Sprewell there, I suppose. Got to keep the ‘work’ going for as long as possible.

“I think it’s interesting here, the thing is that I’ve talked a lot of stuff about Kimbo, but I absolutely respect the fact that he’s stepped up and he’s coming on,” stated the UFC President to Carmichael Dave. “You know, this is a guy who’s fought on CBS, he’s a big draw and you know a lot of people have offered him a lot of money and, uh,he wants to be legit, he wanted to come on The Ultimate Fighter. Let me tell you what, you don’t get paid to come on The Ultimate Fighter. You come in and you, uh, you fight and you try to win a contract, you know. I gotta give the guy respect for doing it.”

“I said a lot of things about this guy and I’m going to tell you now, just like I would, I got nothing but respect for him. This guy stepped up and he wants to fight on The Ultimate Fighter and he’s dead serious about winning this thing, too.”

“The guy’s popular, the guy has some fights, and uh, he wanted to come in, fight in The Ultimate Fighter to get into the UFC. I respect that, so here we go.”

“I say right here, I respect the fact that he came on the show, and is going to do it this way. We’ll see what happens, man. We’ll see what happens.”

Bas Rutten already saw what happened with Kimbo Slice up-close and in-person. However, he’s not a carnival barker leading the charge as the top promoter in the sport, either. It doesn’t matter how ‘legit’ Kimbo Slice is as an MMA fighter because Dana White, the UFC President, will make sure that White America continues to eat up Kimbo’s act for months, if not for a couple of years, to come.