Kimbo popped open that bloody ear and that was it folks!
RESULTS
• Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Furgeson def. James Thompson by TKO at :38, R3
PLAY-BY-PLAY
-Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson vs. James Thompson
R1 - Thompson clinches and Kimbo lands knees. Thompson gets Kimbo down, but gets back up before taking damage. Thompson gets him down again and is in Kimbo’s half-guard. Thompson passes to side control but Kimbo scrambles back to his feet. They’re clinches against the cage trading knees. Thompson goes for a standing guillotine. Kimbo landing knees to Thompson’s legs while in the choke. Kimbo is out and circles away from the fence. Thompson drives Kimbo into the cage, but Kimbo takes him down. Kimbo tries a neck crank but Thompson stands and Kimbo slips and Thompson jumps down on him. Thompson tries for a Kimura but Kimbo sweeps and is now in Thompson’s half-guard. The round ends with Thompson trying for a Kimura and Kimbo trying to land punches. MMAWeekly scores round one 10-9 for Thompson.
R2 - Kimbo with jabs and Thompson goes for a takedown that Kimbo defends. Kimbo hurts Thompson with a right hand. Thompson goes for single-leg but doesn’t get it. Kimbo trying to land big shots but Thompson recovers. Thompson takes Kimbo down but Kimbo goes for a guillotine. Thompson gets out and starts to ground and pound. Kimbo’s on his back with Thompson in side control landing short elbows and punches to Kimbo.
The referee stands them up. Left hand hurts Thompson. Kimbo teeing off on Thompson. Thompson still around, though. Thompson gets a double-leg takedown and has Kimbo against the cage. Thompson has his head against the cage and landing punches, now elbows. It’s elbow after elbow, at least 20 of them. Kimbo not defending. The round ends with Thompson landing uncontested elbows to Kimbo’s head. MMAWeekly scores the second round 10-9 for Thompson.
R3 - Kimbo lands a big right hand. Thompson takes a few more shots that exploded his ear. The referee stops the fight with the announcers screaming “Horrible stoppage!!”
Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Furgeson def. James Thompson by TKO at :38, R
Could MMA’s prime-time debut on network television showcase a better fighter? Yes. But, there’s still a way to make the entire Slice situation more tolerable, and I will expound more on this next week. For now, and this is what I told the host, people need to grudgingly accept Slice because he’s going to be bringing a whole lot of people to this sport. Yes, it sucks that the winner of American Idol is being treated like the greatest musician of all time, but MMA still comes out a winner Saturday night.
And, at least EliteXC is handling Slice the right way. They aren’t trying to make him someone he’s not and putting him up against the top competition in the sport, because he would get destroyed. Kimbo is getting a push in mainstream media like Chuck Liddell got before he fought Rampage Jackson. Liddell lost steam because of his loss to a real fighter. Slice will only grow from this event as he knocks out this big guy, who is proficient at only one thing related to fighting — getting himself knocked out. He’s a real star in that category.
I will say this — Kimbo certainly does not set the sport back two years, as a commenter to an early post suggested. Slice will bring new eyes to the sport and he won’t embarrass it. He’s not going to be showboating or dancing around the ring. He’s not going to be gauging eyes or going for groin shots. He’s simply going to destroy James Thompson. That’s not bad for the sport. It may mislead people, who think that either of the two fighters in the main event is relatively close to the top of their field, but it won’t cause any long-term damage.
No one will be tuning in to see a technical exchange of muay thai and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and turn off the TV in disgust when they see nothing but a brawl. It’s like having a guy in a giant Uncle Sam costume stand in front of a store with a sign — it will draw some eyes and get people in the door. Maybe they will give the real products in the store a chance, and if that happens, then the ridiculous Uncle Sam costume wasn’t a bad idea after all.
Opinion by: Mark Chalifoux
Kimbo Slice has an endorsement contract with the pornographic web site Reality Kings. But while fighters usually get to decide for themselves which corporate sponsors’ logos they wear into the cage, Slice has been told that he can’t advertise Reality Kings on the EliteXC show on CBS Saturday night.
Via Five Ounces of Pain comes the word from EliteXC President Gary Shaw, who said, “Reality Kings will not be on his clothing. …We understand what’s socially responsible, and CBS has a very high standard for standards and practices. And every logo we put on or whatever we do goes through CBS in their standards and practices.”
That’s definitely the right call, as Saturday night’s show should be all about trying to attract people to mixed martial arts, not to reinforce the negative stereotypes that surround the sport. All the fighters on the CBS card will make a significant chunk of money from the ability to wear sponsors’ logos on their clothing, and it’s perfectly fair for EliteXC to tell the fighters that certain sponsors are out of bounds.
If anyone had any remaining doubts that the broadcast TV networks are seriously worried about their declining audiences, they simply have to turn on CBS this Saturday at 9 p.m. That night the onetime Tiffany Network will turn over its airwaves to a bald, bearded former strip-club bouncer, whose ability to make people bleed has made him a media superstar, currently gracing the cover of ESPN The Magazine.
On the night where Mary Tyler Moore once ruled, CBS is now banking on Kevin Ferguson, a mixed martial arts fighter who goes by the stage name of Kimbo Slice, to draw younger viewers, especially men ages 18 to 34. But in giving such a prime-time spot to mixed martial arts (MMA), the fast-growing, full-combat sport that combines elements of boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, jujitsu and other disciplines, the network is taking a calculated gamble.
Plenty of people are ticked that these violent, bloody bouts will air on free TV. Even CBS executive chairman Sumner Redstone has said that while the move makes business sense, he doesn’t personally like the sport and thinks airing it is not “socially responsible” (but, he says, the network’s president and CEO Les Moonves calls the shots). “Sure, people have asked ‘are you crazy?’ says Kelly Kahl, the network’s scheduling guru. “And internally, some people are nervous. But we’re juiced for this. CBS may skew older than the other networks, but it doesn’t always have to be that way. MMA is something worth betting on.”
While the move is a risk for CBS, it’s major milestone for MMA, whose growth has been one of the decade’s most stunning sports business success stories. For the first time a live MMA fight will be broadcast on one of the big four networks, an extraordinary feat for a sport that, just 10 or so years ago, was roundly derided as “human cockfighting.” At first, the caged bouts were fought in the shadows, since the sport was banned in almost every state (it is now sanctioned in 33). But MMA now draws strong ratings on the cable channel Spike TV, and is a money-maker on pay-per-view; in 2007, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, MMA’s dominant promoter, secured over $200 million in pay-per-view revenues, up from some $40 million in 2005. Still, scoring a prime-time network audience will expose the sport to a whole new universe of potential fans, and scrutiny. “This is hugely important for the sport,” says Doug DeLuca, Chairman of ProElite Inc., the company that is staging the CBS bouts. “MMA has done a great job reaching a hard-core, niche audience. Now, it’s time to take it to the next level. All eyes will be on us.”
Well maybe not all eyes. Saturday night prime-time TV, after all, has for years been a relative dead zone full of reruns, so DeLuca shouldn’t expect knockout ratings, at least not right away. But there’s no doubt that Kimbo Slice will draw a crowd. Once a promising Miami high school football player, Kimbo, now 34, flunked out of college and for a time lived in his car. He worked odd jobs — strip-club bouncer, porn company bodyguard — until he started street fighting about seven years ago for money in Miami backyards. “It kept me away from dealing drugs, and breaking into people’s houses,” Kimbo says. “All that thug s—.”
Videos of these brutal, bare-knuckled bouts (there goes Kimbo left-hooking some guy in the face, there’s a Kimbo victim lying dazed and bloodied on the ground) drew over 10 million hits on YouTube. ProElite signed him up, and he has dominated his first three MMA fights. The 250-pound ball of fury might be the first Internet-generated athlete to reach mainstream superstardom. “I never thought it was going to blow up like this,” he says.
Even with Slice’s compelling (dare we say inspirational) life story, MMA won’t be a simple sell for CBS. The network needs to balance the expectations of rabid fans with those of new casual viewers, who will have to be spoon-fed MMA 101. “The challenge is that we have to serve two audiences,” says Kahl. “We don’t want to talk down to the hard-core fans, but we also can’t alienate first-time viewers.” Also, the network isn’t exactly offering the sport prime real estate on the schedule, though CBS insists this is the best way to ease novel programming into the mainstream. “Because it’s new, Saturday nights is a way for us to dip our toe in water,” says Kahl. “Saturday night fights just felt right. And the whole idea of trying to revitalize the night is appealing to us.”
The biggest potential challenge is probably also its biggest appeal — the level of violence itself. True, MMA is no longer an anything-goes spectacle. Rules like weight classes and timed rounds have made it a much safer sport. But unlike pro wrestling, the violence is real, and unpredictable. “The sport is brutal,” says James “The Colossus” Thompson, a British fighter who will take on Kimbo Slice this Saturday. “You can’t sugarcoat it. I will try to hurt Kimbo.” Kimbo says his mindset in the ring is to “seek, kill and destroy.” Sanctioned MMA fights have resulted in one death in the U.S.; in 1998, another American died after being knocked out during an unregulated fight in the Ukraine.
What’s more, by exposing MMA to kids who are channel surfing, the network, and advertisers like Burger King and Miller, are risking a backlash. “Anyone who thinks CBS will not come out of this with some kind of black eye is fooling themselves,” says Marc Ganis, President of SportCorp, a consulting firm. “Just wait for the first news report about two eight-year-olds that went after each other because of something they watched on CBS. It’s going to happen.” Kahl scoffs at such fears. “I find that statements like this come from ignorance, from a snapshot of what the sport was 10 years ago,” he says. “Yes, it’s violent. But so is pro football and boxing. There are plenty of violent sports out there. These guys aren’t walking out of a bar into the cage. They’re walking out a gym into a cage. They are world-class athletes.”
The watchdog groups are already gearing up. “I hope parents use good judgment and don’t let their kids watch it,” says Melissa Henson, communications director for the Parents’ Television Council. “It’s not appropriate for children.” These MMA critics get Kimbo’s blood boiling. “I would rather have my son watch MMA and learn to defend himself from a bully,” he says, “than have him watch the hunting channel and see some guy blow a deer’s head off.”
Fortunately, Slice can channel his anger for the match. Thompson, his main event opponent, is talking plenty of trash, and looking to crush Kimbo’s legend. “Obviously, Kimbo hasn’t been tested,” says Thompson. “No one, not the best MMA fighter in the world, will be able to live up to that hype.” Thompson promises to go on the offensive, but Kimbo brushes the tough talk aside. “If he comes with aggression, that’s like gasoline igniting a fire,” Kimbo says.
Like many pro athletes, MMA fighters like to think of themselves as performers at heart, as skilled at marketing as they are at their athletic moves. “Watch the Colossus conquer Kimbo,” Thompson says. “It’s going to be a great night for whole family.” Then again, if too many families watch the sport, CBS could find itself the one getting beaten up.
CBS. The Tiffany network. The network of Walter Cronkite, Ed Sullivan, Lucille Ball and Kimbo Slice?
Slice — and after looking at his picture, perhaps we should call him Mr. Slice — will headline the fight card Saturday night on “CBS EliteXC Saturday Night Fights.” The two-hour event, starting at 9, is the first network TV prime-time mixed martial arts event. The show will be broadcast live to the East Coast and delayed three hours to the Pacific time zone and will originate from the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., where the New Jersey Devils play.
Saturday’s telecast is the first of four EliteXC cards CBS will show this year.
From a broadcasting standpoint, it’s interesting to note that the CBS Sports division of the network has nothing to do with this telecast. It’s CBS Entertainment that’s putting it together.
Quite frankly, it has appeared as if the sports division does not want to be sullied by associating itself with this endeavor. CBS Sports has forwarded e-mail news releases about the event to sports reporters, but has otherwise kept its hands pretty clean.
However, there are significant crossovers between sports and entertainment. The most significant was the choice of Gus Johnson to be the blow-by-blow announcer for “Saturday Night Fights.”
Johnson is known most for his play-by-play during the NCAA Basketball Tournament. His excitable demeanor has produced a bit of a cult following on YouTube and there was a significant outcry to CBS in 2007 when his tournament role was reduced. It was restored last March.
But Johnson brings more than just a loud voice to Saturday’s event. He has studied kung fu and boxing, and recently began studying jujitsu.
“I’ve been prepping a lot and trying to find out who all the great fighters in the world are,” Johnson told reporters last week. ” It is a new sport for me and I won’t lie about that or try to make it anything other than what it is, but I’ve been studying and I like this sport. It’s a refreshing sport for me because these athletes that we’re going to be highlighting are hungry.
“One thing I’ve noticed is they’re very nice people and they’re not arrogant and they’re not overpaid. Coming out of pro football and pro basketball, high levels of college basketball and high levels of professional boxing, getting an opportunity to work in mixed martial arts, I think, is a great career move for me because I was starting to get a little bored in some of the other things I was doing.”
Slice — born with the not-so-nearly imposing name of Kevin Ferguson — will face James “Colossus” Thompson in a heavyweight fight Saturday night. “Ruthless” Robbie Lawler will meet Scott “Hands of Steel” Smith for the EliteXC middleweight title. Other fights include Gina “Conviction” Carano vs. Kaitlin Young at 140 pounds, middleweights Phil Baroni vs. Joey Villasenor and heavyweights Brett “The Grim” Rogers vs. Jon Murphy.
