Slice might have been an ambassador for a sport more complex than what he was fully capable of doing himself, but eyeballs followed him wherever he went. Every fight bred criticism and conspiracy theories. When Slice tumbled against late-replacement Seth Petruzelli that October, Elite XC fell apart to the tune of 4.5 million viewers. In May 2008, his headlining win on CBS over James Thompson and his swollen, purple ear led to the 6.5-million-viewer peak of Elite XC: Primetime. No Kimbo Slice fight was conventionally good in a sporting sense, and yet they were always interesting. Guys like them do the sport a disservice." "Guys like that just reinforce the idea in the public's eye that we are all blood thirsty barbarians who just want to pummel each other and that there is no skill required. "Every time Kimbo fights it sets the sport back," former UFC heavyweight champion Frank Mir told Five Ounces of Pain in 2008, speaking the sentiments of a thousand message board posts. Slice was a late bloomer who, through no fault of his own, was thrust into the spotlight with grappling deficiencies he'd never fully overcome, and during a time when watching an MMA fight in casual company always required an explanation- yes, there are rules, and no, you can't kick each other in the balls-Slice was a confusing celebrity. Like Abbott, Slice's haymaker-first style embodied preconceptions about MMA that its self-styled guardians deemed dangerous to its survival. He wound up on the cover of ESPN The Magazine not long after. Three months later, he beat an overfed Tank Abbott and assumed Abbott's mantle as the premier brawler with no need for nuance (or guard passing). He beat 10-10 journeyman Bo Cantrell in his pro debut in November 2007. From the start, his career was manicured to keep him winning. When Elite XC made Kimbo Slice the face of the organization, there was no secret as to why: he was a big, scary black dude-with all the racial subtext and ugly historical baggage that description carries-who promised knockouts, no man-hugging, and a dose of the outlaw past MMA trying to shed. The sustainability of MMA wasn't assured, and bad impressions threatened to erase all that good will. But signs of progress doubled as reasons for self-consciousness and thin skin. State athletic commissions continued bringing MMA under its purview, fighters strutted to the ring in t-shirts with screen-printed logos for tire and prophylactic companies looking to get in on a growing a sport, the UFC was the darling of Spike TV, and rival promotions like Elite XC and the IFL had made their own inroads. Kimbo Slice busting apart that one guy's eye is a cultural touchstone of the Internet circa 2004.īy the time Slice transformed into a bona fide professional MMA fighter in 2007, the sport around him had writhed and convulsed into a delicate place-one foot in the mainstream, one teetering off a cliff. But the biography mattered less than the clips. (Every time I hear about Slice getting his fame through YouTube, I want to push my glasses up the bridge of nose and point out that, actually, he was a phenomenon before YouTube existed.) Bits and pieces of a backstory emerged: once a football standout who fell on hard times, he now worked security for a porn company and fought for wads of cash. Over AOL Instant Messenger, friends who shared bloodlust copied and pasted links to grainy video clips of his handiwork. I first heard about Kimbo Slice in 2004 in the pages of the Boston Herald, when Boston cop and part-time MMA fighter Sean Gannon got in trouble for brawling with (and beating) Slice behind closed doors. He might have been a frustrating figure for idealists worried about the sanctity of sport, but even for purists, Kimbo Slice was must-see TV. Kimbo Slice was equal parts Greek mythology, Horatio Alger story, and sheer charisma. It was also the unexpected end of a life that would have read like fiction if we hadn't watched it with our own eyes: a bald, bearded, skull-capped mesomorph from the wilds of South Florida with bare fists to be feared, whose illicit exploits against opponents on patchy lawns and pavement became staples of the mid-2000s Internet, who leapt from fighting in front of pre-HD video cameras to fighting in front of some of the largest audiences ever to tune into a mixed martial arts fight.
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