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Charles Jay

We introduce the “opponent” to the MMA world

I was asked by the owner of the site why in the world am I writing so much about Kimbo; in fact why am I writing about him at all? My best reply is that Kimbo Slice is on the Jimmy Kimmel show and he’s been profiled by ESPN and he drives a lot of betting and that for a sport that is in a constant effort to break into the mainstream, he seems to be getting there.

Of course, there are other reasons as well. I think he is an illustrative example of where the sport of mixed martial arts risks going wrong.

You know, a while back I was asked by Fox Sports to do a story on what effect MMA might be having on boxing, and whether the people inside boxing were threatened in any way by it. I conducted a lot of interviews, both on and off the record, and one of the themes that kept coming up - at least from the people who were familiar with MMA - was that one big difference was the way an outfit like the UFC, for example, would put together fights that were almost always competitive; in other words, they were not designed to “steer” a fighter’s career by giving him an easy win. In fact, I will confirm that there were promoters in boxing who were threatened by it, but they had no idea how to counteract it, because the business model boxing operates under now is such that the fighters are the marketable commodity that must be brought along to a big payday. In effect, the promoters have more or less taken over the de facto role of manager, while the TV networks have more of a resemblance to what the promoters used to be.

It is certainly something that has hurt the product in boxing. There is no way it can’t. If a promoter is presenting a fight card in which half the contestants are under contract to him, and the other half aren’t, you are going to have fights in which the matchmaking is designed to move the “house” fighter along. It follows simple logic that shows like that are going to be of lower quality and thus bring less entertainment value.

So what I’m saying, I guess, is that mixed martial arts shows had a competitive advantage over boxing in that regard, and for those fans who might find themselves making a choice between buying that boxing pay-per-view which may have predictable outcomes and the MMA show where the outcomes are less predictable, the MMA show is going to win out most times. And the people who are solid MMA fans to begin with are much less likely to stray to boxing for that very reason. As it turns out, the self-absorption of boxing promoters has come back to haunt them.

But now along comes Kimbo.

And we are being introduced to the “opponent,” or in wrestling what is known as the “jobber.”

Which marks a regression back to what MMA supposedly didn’t want to become.

I’ve seen a lot of the “underground” fights Kimbo has had on the internet. Essentially they follow the same formula - Kimbo rushes in there against a guy without too much talent, lands a few blows and then the opponent goes down. Then the camera pans away from the “action” and comes back about 30 seconds later, at which point the opponent’s face looks mangled and covered with blood, and if you’ve got the slightest bit of an educated eye you’re saying to yourself, “It is virtually impossible do so much physical damage in such a short period of time.”

The fight Kimbo lost - to a cop from Boston named Sean Gannon, looked like an accident. He just ran out of gas after a while and couldn’t go any more. You could tell as they were running the camera that they wanted to do something to change the outcome. Then there was the one-round “exhibition” with Ray Mercer, who I’m convinced had no idea whatsoever what he was doing and maybe didn’t care. Remember, this was the same Ray Mercer who once got caught, on camera, trying to coerce a boxing opponent, Jesse Ferguson (no relation to Kimbo, who real name is Kevin Ferguson) to throw the fight, right there in the middle of the action!

And Kimbo’s debut on Elite XC was against what must be MMA’s equivalent of what we call an “opponent” in boxing, a guy named Bo Cantrell who had a 10-10 record and went down from a Kimbo elbow in a fight that, like many of the ones before it, looked like it had been “worked.”

Now we’ve got Tank Abbott, who is 42 years old, sports a record of 10-13 and is just dying for one last payday. My quick prediction is that he won’t get in the way. I’ll leave that up to your own interpretation.

Don’t get me wrong - if Kimbo turns out to be the real deal I would be the first to congratulate him. But the point here is that this is a man who, though undeniably athletic and apparently capable of using his hands and his feet, could be ascending to the point where he is one of the most recognizable MMA fighters in the world - a face of the spot, if you will - and it may just be that he’s going to get there without ever having fought a legitimate fight.

I wonder if that’s even what the original guys from the UFC, who truly ran a Wild West show, ever envisioned.

And you just knew that if you had a situation like this - a veritable Butterbean of the cage - a boxing promoter couldn’t possibly be very far behind, right? Well, after Kimbo’s fight with Abbott, which was originally ticketed for Atlantic City, got canceled when a fly-by-night promoter named ‘Cage Fury’ disappeared from the face of the MMA earth, he was quickly scooped up by Gary Shaw, a boxing promoter (and an accomplished one at that) who engineered Elite XC’s deal with Showtime, took a piece of the action, and in effect became the front man for the operation.

Translation - look for more of this with other fighters in the future.

And I would ask Ken Shamrock, who is rumored to be a future opponent for Kimbo, the same question I would have asked Larry Holmes, if I had the chance, before he stepped in the ring with Butterbean: in this age of the internet, where everything gets put down in the Wikipedia and YouTube and in countless links that can be reached with a simple click of the mouse, do you really want to take part in such a thing that will etched in history forever, for anyone to access?

Is it really worth it?