And it hasn’t been in quite a while. Yet EliteXC seemed to be banking on the internet “sensation” to hoist the company to the top. The brawler style was 20 years ago, the brawler just doesn’t have the skills other have to compete anymore. Along comes Kimbo Slice they start feeding him outdated, weak fighters since his debut. Last night Shamrock couldn’t fight due to injury, so a nobody stepped in. And beat up Kimbo in 17 seconds.
I think that them putting Kimbo as the main event, as the face of EliteXC, and then giving him easy fighters to keep him on the top was wrong. And now I want to see how they will change it up to a good thing. If you’re going to bank on one fighter try to make him a skilled in the sport fighter. MMA rant over.
I think it was 14 seconds. And at 205.5 lbs. Petruzelli is essentially a light heavyweight. Slice needs a lot of work before he can compete with the elite. These guys have been training for years.
Yeah that’s the meat and potatoes of my argument. He doesn’t have the training, and at his age I hardly think he will before he gets to old to fight. He would have probably did pretty well in the early 90’s when the sport was just finding what works in the cage. Street fighting/Brawler with limited ground or skilled striking background isn’t going to get you far nowadays. Then again Tank Abbot didn’t really do that well with that style then either. So maybe that style never worked well.
They are banking on Kimbo though, that is not a good thing.
Slice got lucky on the last EliteXC primetime fight…
I forget the name of the guy he was fighting, but Kimbo was not winning that fight. His opponant though managed to get some sort of wierd ear thing- it filled with blood and the fight had to be stopped.
Had that fight continued- it would not have ended will for Kimbo.
He’s a fun fighter to watch. In a sport like MMA- where every fighter has the ability to lay somebody out if you lose your focus for 1/2 a second- he’s a hard enough puncher to get that going. But, you realized watching him then, he wasn’t going to become “Elite”.
Slice’s opponent actually came into the ring with that cauliflower ear. Slice didn’t cause it, but he popped it, stopping the fight.
That aside, I watched Saturday’s fight about 10 times on Youtube, and I still can’t figure out what it is that put Slice down. The right that was landed on his chin just didn’t look that strong, and where did he get that huge cut on his temple?
Also, while I agree that Slice probably doesn’t have the skill set to really mix it up with good MMA guys, Saturday’s fight didn’t really prove that. He lost because his opponent got in a strong (apparently) punch. It wasn’t ground and pound, MMA skills that caused him to lose, it was a stand up punch that could’ve been thrown by, and received by, anyone.
There may have been some attempted funny business with this fight. Here’s a quote from Petruzelli:
“My original plan was to throw out push kicks, have him think that I’m gonna throw them more, and then to shoot in on him, obviously. But the promoters kind of hinted to me, and they gave me the money to stand and trade with him. They didn’t want me to take him down, let’s just put it that way. It was worth my while to try to stand up and punch with him.”
Found here:
(scroll down to see the story)
Can’t really call it a fix, since he won the fight, but still…he took money to fight with less than his strongest skillset…
Smells a bit fishy to me. Although Petruzelli did not seem to be the sharpest knife in the drawer in his post fight interview. I did enjoy hearing him say that he guessed he would be a full time fighter from now on rather than a part time fighter. Take that, Kimbo!
The hilarious thing is that Petruzelli pretty much knew he was a can. Anybody who watched the fight might recall he smirking, sardonic limpwristed wave to the crowd just subsequent to his introduction. The absolute shock on his face after the fight was called, however, was absolutely priceless.
My gut is that Petruzelli was probably paid to stand - the crowd was hungry for blood and the expectation probably was that he’d get destroyed in a striking match. I’m a little saddened that it doesn’t seem like the guy’s career is going to take off as much as it should after beating a headlining name like Mr Flop-Of-The-Year Slice.
I’ve seen some of Tank’s fights (everything from UFC 6 to the last Ultimate Ultimate). The thing that really stood out about him was that while he was little more than a free-swinging brawler, he was so powerful and relentless that if his opponent left himself open even a moment too long, he was finished. The problem was that if an opponent was patient, knew how to grapple, and always kept his guard up, Tank had no answer. (Watch his UFC 6 final against Oleg Taktarov for a perfect example of this.)
One thing that I don’t see mentioned often was how lucky he was to not be exposed for a long time. He entered the scene right after Royce Gracie (who eats overweight one-dimensional brawlers for breakfast) left UFC in disgust, he never had to face Ken Shamrock even once, and he went down in UFC 11 without facing Mark Coleman, for which the recovery time would’ve made his supension for terrorizing John McCarthy’s wife look like a 7th inning stretch.
Anyway, I’m not terribly surprised that Kimbo Slice got clobbered. It was going to happen. I’m not even particularly surprised that he got outpunched; a stronger hitter losing to a weaker hitter who makes his shots count happens all the time. There is no way for any one-dimensional fighter, no matter how strong, or how tough, or how intimidating, to make it in today’s MMA. That’s why it’s called sprawl and brawl. Not just brawl. Not gonna work.
Oh, one more thing re. Slice. All this talk about if the fix was in or not, or how hard that jab was, etc., misses the point. And that is that there’s NO EXPLANATION that doesn’t make him look horrible.
If he lost legitimately (he got “caught”, to use modern MMA nomenclature), he got beaten up by a nobody, and he also showed the world that he’s a dead fish on the ground.
If he mailed it in out of disgust that the opponent was changed on him, he’s a whiny, self-centered brat who doesn’t give a damn about the organization that’s making him rich and cannot be counted on to give the fans their money’s worth ever again.
If he was surprised by the opponent change and unprepared to face Petruzelli, he’s a bungling musclehead who becomes completely useless when he’s not given exactly the kind of fight he wants.
If he threw the fight, he’s a complete slimeball and anywhere from the 3rd to 10th biggest moron on the planet. The same is true if Petruzelli really accepted a payout to keep the fight standing and he was overconfident as a result (and seriously, :smack: ).
It’ll be interesting, in a nonfatal car crash kind of way, to see just how EliteXC deals with this. Every time UFC was about to lose a big star, they had the foresight to build up another before he left for good. Can this upstart make a new headliner before it’s too late?
In some fantasy world. Ken Shamrock will not win another fight in his career. It’s questionable if he wants to. And you can bet that Kimbo was defending leglocks “all day baby, all day” with Bas Rutten.
The punch landed around his eye and scraped downward towards his chin. It was strong because Kimbo ran right into it like a freight train. He essentially doubled (or more) the power of the punch. I think it just stunned/shocked him because you can tell he was trying to get up almost before he hit the ground, but Seth wisely kept the heat on him and wouldn’t let up until the fight was called.
I watched the fight in HD, and the slo-mo replays made it pretty obvious that that punch rang Slice’s bell pretty solidly. He may even get another fight, 'cause he has that puncher’s chance and an intimidating frame. But, unless you buy that he got tagged with a freak flash knock-out, he’s demonstrated a glass jaw that’ll pretty much end his career before it really gets off the ground.
I can’t believe so many people think like this. Kimbo could lose his next 5 fights by knockout and still be a draw and still get more fights. Tank Abbott has lost 8 of his last 9 fights, and Ken Shamrock has lost 7 of his last 8, and they both still get 6-figure fight deals - more than all but the top tier UFC fighters.
Andrei Arlovski demonstrated a “glass chin” in his very first fight (and arguably a couple other fights including his 2nd meeting with Tim Sylvia.) Cro Cop demonstrated a “glass chin” versus Kevin Randleman. Their careers are doing just fine.
:smack: ).