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By Charles Jay

If the promoters of Saturday’s fight in London really wanted to put Ken Shamrock in with Kimbo Slice, they might have wanted to think twice before risking that with a guy who could conceivably lose any time he stepped into the cage.  Well, obviously Shamrock was looking for an easy payday, or the promoters wanted to do a little “milking.”

Or maybe a little of both.

This “tuneup fight mentality” is something that is a little foreign to the UFC, but seems to fit right in with Elite XC’s game plan. Like most things that cheapen the product, this is a crossover from boxing, where they’ve got cheapening the product down to a science.

Gary Shaw, whose connections with Showtime propelled him into mixed martial arts in the first place, was and is a boxing promoter. As such, he is accustomed to getting a 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 with a network. In other words, if you want his guy for the sake of televising a big fight, you have to pad his bank account - and his record - with a couple of easy fights first. Of course, that way, before the money trickles down to the fighter, the promoter can make himself three paydays instead of one.

Sometimes he’ll team up with another promoter to do it.

Like when they were trying to set up a rematch between Manny Pacquiao and Erik Morales.

Of course, Shaw and the other promoter, Bob Arum, demanded that HBO allow them to milk the situation a little by forcing upon them a double-header where the two fighters would take on lesser opponents as a prelude to the rematch, with the assumption that both were going to win, naturally. No doubt that was the design. They were gratuitous fights, because HBO didn’t need them to sell the rematch. But they really didn’t have much of a choice.

Pacquiao took care of Hector Velasquez, but unexpectedly, Morales lost to Zahir Raheem.

But did it kill the rematch? Not at all. Plans forged ahead, and in fact were announced at the post-fight press conference, where Raheem’s management was obedient enough not to demand to be Pacquiao’s next opponent, something they could have campaigned for with a considerable degree of conviction.

When a network puts on a double-header like this, it is usually implied that there is something at stake; that a loss might derail a fighter’s career. That is part of the inherent value that is used to induce the viewer to watch. So when you present something as a major event, with two fighters in separate bouts who are on the proverbial “collision course,” if you tell the viewer later that the results didn’t matter you are, in effect, telling them they are suckers.

I bring up that anecdote because you may see that, on a smaller scale, happening again, with the influence for it coming from boxing.

The eventual fight was to be Kimbo vs. Shamrock. And Shamrock was involved in what was supposed to be a tuneup for that fight. And it backfired on them, although you can’t really blame Shaw & Co. for the result - Buzz Berry was indeed enough of a stiff.

But here’s the thing - when the Elite XC people put Kimbo into that first show it has on CBS, they’re going to have to produce something that has a little “oomph” to it while at the same time providing a “vehicle” for Kimbo to move forward, since they’ll probably want to use him once or twice more in their four-show allotment.

I know that Berry’s name was mentioned as a possibility, but even though that fits the non-competitive part of the requirement, there is little name value. It’s not enough that he is “the guy who beat Shamrock.” Other names, like Ricco Rodriguez, may be a little too good ( as in capable) for Kimbo right now.

When these guys look around, they may just find that the guy who fits best is going to be Shamrock himself. Don’t discount it, because they’ve done that kind of thing before, as I’ve illustrated.

The question is, will you be watching? If so, then maybe you can call yourself a (fill in the blank).