A year after being humiliated, Kimbo Slice and Houston Alexander will play the roles of UFC heros
Published by Zach Arnold on December 3rd, 2009 in Current Events

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14 months ago, Kimbo Slice was a punch line on every sports talk show. He had just lost to Seth Petruzelli in 13 seconds on CBS in South Florida. Kimbo’s loss was devastating, but nowhere near as devastating as the comments that Petruzelli made on the radio in Orlando that created ‘stand-up gate,’ which revolved around whether or not Elite XC encouraged and paid Petruzelli to keep the fight standing up against Kimbo. The scandal caused CBS to back away from Elite XC and the promotion was dead.

Dana White, at the time, naturally sounded off on Gary Shaw defending the practice of encouraging fighters to stand up in fights. White blasted Petruzelli, Kimbo, and Shaw in a Youtube interview:

“The idiot Gary Shaw actually does an interview with the LA Times, OK? And he says that, ‘You know, we didn’t do anything wrong. There’s nothing wrong with paying a guy to stand-up. We got no problem doing that.’

Yes, you scumbag, there is a problem with that. Think about this, Mandalay Bay and The Venetian both had betting on this. You, the consumer, the mixed martial arts fan, could go in and bet on this fight. OK? Now anybody who’s going to bet on this fight is going to think, ‘Well if Seth Petruzelli can get him to the ground, the fight’s over. So I’m gonna bet, take a chance that Seth’s going to get him down and submit him.’ But you don’t know the scumbag promoters behind the scenes went in and paid him to not to go to the ground. They paid him to stand-up. You know why? Because they thought that Kimbo Slice was going to viciously knock him out.

But Kimbo Slick SUCKS! Like I’ve said now for the last few months. This fucking guy can’t fight and he got knocked out in 13 seconds by a guy who didn’t win the Ultimate Fighter and who didn’t win fights in the UFC.

They brought him up from the undercard to fight the main event guy and knocked him out in 13 seconds.”

White would go on to trash Kimbo Slice wherever he went and publicly challenged Kimbo to come on The Ultimate Fighter. Then, the shock of all shocks happened — Kimbo Slice accepted the invitation and went on the show. While Kimbo’s career was down and out, UFC PPV business skyrocketed. Everything culminated with UFC 100, drawing an estimated 1.7 million PPV buys. The next months, UFC 101 with BJ Penn vs. Kenny Florian did an estimated 800,000 PPV buys. Since that point, UFC buyrates have reportedly plummeted by an estimated 50% or more. According to Dave Meltzer of The Wrestling Observer newsletter (December 7th, 2009 edition), UFC 106 featuring the return of Tito Ortiz vs. Forrest Griffin did shockingly low numbers.

The first week cable estimate on UFC 106 was 330,000, which is even lower than earliest projections we had. UFC 104 with Lyoto Machida vs. Mauricio Shogun Rua came in at 450,000 in a cable estimate and 460,000 in a trending estimate. Keep in mind the general rule of thumb by nature of how numbers are reported in the U.S. is that the final number since most UFC buys are in the U.S. will wind up 10-15% above these original numbers, so it’s likely Machida-Rua ends up at 500,000, which isn’t bad, and UFC 106 winds up 360,000 to 375,000, which for that fight is a gigantic disappointment.

Since the taping of this season’s version of The Ultimate Fighter with Kimbo Slice, the promotion’s PPV buyrates have plummeted but Kimbo’s stock has soared. Ratings for this season’s TUF series have been really good and have breathed new life into a show with a stale format. What Kimbo couldn’t have predicted was just how good his luck would be in terms of coming out of the show as a conquering hero. Despite losing to Roy Nelson in an ugly fight, everyone (fans, media, fighters) came out of it accepting Kimbo Slice as anything but a fraud. Credit that to the UFC marketing machine, but also give credit to Kimbo who is a genius at turning people who hate him into fans.

The big question coming out of The Ultimate Fighter was what Kimbo Slice’s future would be in the UFC. Well, we found out that he would be taking on explosive puncher Houston Alexander in a catch-weight fight of 215 pounds this Saturday night. Somebody’s going to get knocked out in that fight. Alexander is coming off of some difficult losses himself. He doesn’t have enough time to train full days on his ground work, so his skill set will always be limited to due to the personal and professional commitments he has to make. Nevertheless, both Kimbo and Houston have excellent charisma and love to go to war. Both fighters, who a year ago were struggling to hold onto their positions in the MMA world, now find themselves in an incredibly enviable position.

Why?

It may not be admitted publicly, but UFC desperately needs both men to deliver big on Saturday. It’s a fight that the company hopes to attract a ton of eyeballs in order to do a hard sell for the upcoming UFC 107 PPV on the 12th which features BJ Penn vs. Diego Sanchez in Memphis. Penn is a popular fighter, but he needs a superstar enemy to really draw big attention. The fight wasn’t supposed to take place in Memphis — it was supposed to be Quinton Jackson’s homecoming fight with The Ultimate Fighter show setting up a bout against the hated Rashad Evans. Instead, Rampage went to do the A-Team movie re-make and decided he wanted more money to fight Evans. Evans got screwed and so did the Memphis fans. With PPV buyrates dropping fast for UFC, the company needed something that would catch the attention of casual sports fans — and the fight between Houston Alexander and Kimbo Slice will do just that.

The UFC is facing enormously strong competition on Saturday. They have to deal with a dream football game featuring Alabama vs. Florida for the SEC Title in essentially a de-facto semi-final College Football championship game. You don’t even have to be in SEC country to understand just how huge the numbers will be for that game. Without Houston vs. Kimbo, UFC’s Saturday telecast on Spike TV had no shot of attracting fans. Now? At least they have a fighting chance.

12 months ago, both Kimbo Slice and Houston Alexander were almost considered road kill in the MMA business. Today? They are in prime position to fight their way back to the top and make new fans in the process. It’s all about redemption.

Houston, Kimbo, and Dana White are trying their damnedest to hard sell Saturday night’s fight.

“What went through my mind when they asked me about the fight was, WOW… that was the first thing that came to my mind was wow and I was like, hmm… think that about one… YES, I’m going to go ahead and take that fight,” stated Alexander in a UFC media interview.

“He has a street fighting background. I also have a street fighting background, but understand that we’re with camps, you know, we have a coaching staff and the coaching staff you know they’re coming with game plans so you know if you the audience are thinking that you know it’s just going to be an all-out brawl, I honestly doing think it’s going to be that way, I think it’s going to be planned out and I think both camps are going to come in with a game plan.

This is a very important fight for myself, you know and people back in my community so I’m putting pressure on myself to do well in this fight.

This fight is the most important fight of my MMA career because for one, you still have to prove to your peers, you still have to prove to the fans, you still have to prove to the media that you belong.

This will probably end up being Knockout of the Night, but it’s going to be me definitely doing the knocking out.”

Despite his likeable nature and overall interesting background, Alexander will be the heel going into this fight. Kimbo will be the huge babyface.

“I mean it’s going to be pretty technical I mean considering you know what I’m saying he has a similar style as mine, you know what I’m saying, give or take you know what I’m saying with a little Muay Thai in there you know but for the most part about it it’s going to be a thumping, somebody’s going to get knocked out. Everybody knows what my strongs is, you know what I’m saying, somebody’s getting knocked out in this fight,” said Kimbo with his golden grill during a UFC media interview.

“I never feel pressure. It’s a show and a fight, you know what I’m saying, people are be able to you know see and judge it for themselves.

Every fighter that fights in The Ultimate Fighter, yeah, they’re good, you know, they can be considered the best at what they do.

You just have to use who you are and what you have and define your fight game and be prepared to fight the guy who’s at the elite at the game.

I wish this motherfucker would try to knock me out because I know I’m going to try to knock him out, so my mentality might be a little bit different from others because I want a person to try to knock me out, I came in this ring thinking and hoping a motherfucker would try to knock me out.

I don’t care how good of a guy he is, we won’t know until we bang but I know I got something if I hit him with this, if I catch him with this, you know it’s going to be light’s out.”

Despite the manner in which he has lost, Kimbo still knows how to suck in the audience and make them believe in him and cheer for him win, lose, or draw.

The biggest challenge for Dana White this season on The Ultimate Fighter was to try to build up Kimbo Slice after all the horrible things he said about him in the media. He’s been relatively successful at it, all things considered.

“I had always said that the only way Kimbo Slice could ever get into the UFC is to get out here and win The Ultimate Fighter but every season we have four, five guys that we think have potential, we give them the opportunity to fight in the Finale and see if they can win and make it into the UFC and this season Kimbo’s going to be one of those guys.

I think that Kimbo does have potential. As this season started, a lot of the fighters hated him. After that first fight with Roy Nelson, Rashad said, man, you know what? He does have some talent. If this guy hooks up the right camp and trains, I think this guy can be a decent fighter.

As we all know, if you watch any of the seasons of The Ultimate Fighter, the guys leave and when they come back they are at a whole another level. Kimbo’s been training with the American Top Team down in Florida, a very well-respected camp. They have Thiago Alves, Thiago Silva, Mike Brown, and Luiz Cane that he’s been training with, you know those guys are known for their ground work and their jiu-jitsu. All the holes that were in Kimbo’s game, he’s been working on with the American Top Team. This is going to be a real test for Kimbo and see if he belongs here in the UFC.

Houston Alexander has tremendous knockout power. He’s got a record of 9-and-4, only 1 of his fights have gone to a decision.

This guy is a tough guy with knockout power in both hands. He’s knocked out Alessio Sakara, he’s knocked out Keith Jardine. They’re going to go out in the middle of the Octagon and they’re going to throw punches until somebody goes down.

This is going to be a fight that Kimbo fans are going to want to see.”