It may sound like wishful thinking on the part of Frank Mir but the former UFC champ says the illness that Brock Lesnar is fighting may change his life forever. Is Mir objective? Who knows? But the man speaks from experience. The 30-year-old was on the fast track to MMA stardom when a nasty motorcycle accident nearly ended his career back in 2004. For nearly three years, Mir battled physical and mental issues after suffering a broken leg. He finally turned the corner in 2008.
Mir says Lesnar, who's battling a serious intestinal issue that could require major surgery, may never be the invincible 290-pound behemoth that he was before he got sick:
"I don't how successful he's going to be coming back," Mir told DC and The Sunshine Man on ESPNRadio1100.
"That's going to be a question over his head for a while. It wasn't like he was a slick, technical fighter to begin with. A lot of his style went upon his brute power and strength."
Mir says Lesnar, who is seen below looking much slimmer may not physically be able to regain all his muscle and bulk.
"If Brock Lesnar is unable to put on the same kind of size as he had before, let's face it your intestinal system is what absorbs all the nutrients into your body. If that is under stress, is he going to be able to be a 300-pound guy again? I don't know. If that's not the case, I don't think he's going to be very successful as a fighter at 245," chuckled Mir."
Mir also said his opponent should and will go right for the affected area with knees and kicks to his stomach.
Mir is slated to fight Shane Carwin in March at UFC 111 for what could be a interim heavyweight title. Although Mir says if Lesnar can't return until late 2010, he should be stripped of the heavyweight crown. Mir said he was given about a year after his motorcycle accident and was stripped. He would've felt selfish if he had held onto the belt any longer. By S. Cofield yahoo.com
-- Brock Lesnar/Shane Carwin was originally rescheduled for 108 after their bout was pushed from 106 because of Lesnar's illness. When Lesnar's illness still kept him from training, their main-event bout was canceled.
-- Next, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira/Cain Velasquez was pushed to main-event status until the bout was canceled due to Nog's staph infection.
-- Carlos Condit was the next fighter who had to withdraw. He had a severe infection in his hand that required surgery and an extended hospitalization that seemed to get to Condit's head. Dustin Hazelett replaced Condit on the card and will face Paul Daley.
-- Jim Miller has had three different opponents for 108. First, it was Tyson Griffin who withdrew, and then last night, word came out that Sean Sherk had to withdraw because of a cut. Miller will now face Duan Ludwig.
-- Rory Markham was set to face Martin Kampmann, but Markham sustained a knee injury. Kampmann will now face Jacob Volkmann.
Wow. After reading through that, it's hard not to believe that this card is cursed. At the same time, MMA is a tough sport and one that requires close contact to train. Injuries and infections are inevitable. While it's an awful coincidence that they are all happening to the fighters on one card, there is no curse.
But to be sure, I'm throwing salt over my shoulder as I write this.
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King Mo Lawal vs Mike Whitehead fight video
CUNG LE VS SCOTT SMITH! KO HIGHLIGHT
If Josh Thomson was going to predict a scenario in which he’d lose his Strikeforce lightweight championship, it probably would have gone pretty close to what happened Saturday night at the HP Pavilion.
Thomson lost what is already being talked about as a match of the year candidate, losing to someone that he long considered a very good friend, Gilbert Melendez.
Melendez (17-2), who became Strikeforce interim champion in April while Thomson was on the sidelines all year after breaking his ankle twice, in April and August, won the five-round fight via unanimous decision on scores of 49-47, 49-46 and 49-46.
More From Dave MeltzerThomson-Melendez rematch worth the wait Dec 18, 2009 Coker reflects on Strikeforce's past, future Dec 15, 2009 ADVERTISEMENT
The win avenged Melendez’s five-round loss of the title to Thomson in the same arena last June. Thomson agreed to give Melendez a title rematch that night, but due to injuries, it took a year and a half for it to happen.
Both Melendez and Thomson thought Saturday’s fight was at a slower pace than the original fight, but to the 9,362 spectators it looked to be the opposite. The first fight figured on paper to be a battle between two evenly-matched well-rounded fighters, but instead it was a one-sided domination by Thomson.
This time, while Melendez clearly won the fight, it was everything expected out of the first fight and then more. There were a number of exchanges where both men just stood there toe-to-toe firing punches. Most of those exchanges saw both men stand there and absorb the damage until the fifth round, when Thomson was tiring and needed a finish and it was Melendez, who got the better of it, putting Thomson down. But Thomson came back late in the round with a takedown and getting Melendez’s back, before the men stood and traded big shots as the fight ended to bring the crowd to its feet.
“The punch in the second round didn’t hurt, but the punch in the fourth round (actually the fifth) was a punch to the head that knocked the wind out of me,” said Thomson. “In the second (the knockdown), I didn’t really feel hurt.”
While his face was all marked up, Thomson was all smiles when it was over, praising Melendez, a former good friend and training partner.
“We talked at weigh-ins and said we planned to have the fight of the night,” said Thomson (16-3, 1 no-contest). “I don’t think either of us saw our stock drop with a fight like this. I’m proud of Gilbert. He came back from a loss like a champion. I want to let him enjoy the night.”
“It was a war,” said Melendez, who became the first two-time champion in the four-year history of Strikeforce as a mixed martial arts promotion. “I’m ready for any champions from the UFC or Dream.”
Melendez noted that the fight was not fun, and at no time was he thinking that he may have been in the middle of the match of the year. He was only thinking he was sore and was glad for it to be over. He also was mad that he felt he and Thomson, by not being in the UFC, weren’t getting their fair respect in the MMA world, noting when he saw ratings where he wasn’t in the top ten, and Thomson was in the lower rungs of the top ten.
While there was immediate talk of a third match, which is likely to happen at some point, Strikeforce promoter Scott Coker talked after the show about going to Japan for the New Year’s Eve show and trying to put together Melendez vs. Dream lightweight champion Shinya Aoki and Thomson vs. Dream’s Tatsuya Kawajiri for the next show in San Jose. Although with the nature of the top Japanese fighters having to be available for the big events in Japan, and the availability of buildings and Showtime dates, the stars have to be aligned perfectly for such matches to happen.
“Gilbert won because he was the better man tonight,” said Thomson. “I want to make it clear so people don’t make excuses.”
Thomson said that all week, but it had been 15 months since he last fought, and his injuries didn’t allow him to run in training, which could have made the difference in the later rounds. The difference between the two fights? In the original, Thomson was the matador, teasing Melendez at every opportunity. This time, Melendez, who blamed himself for not training hard enough for the first fight, was in better condition.
After the frantic exchanges, and particularly late, Melendez’s conditioning seemed to be the difference. The wrestling of both men largely neutralized the other, but this time Melendez was able to connect on a far greater percentage of his punches.
“I trained for five rounds and expected to go a hard five rounds,” said Thomson.
On most any other night, people would be talking almost exclusively about Scott Smith’s comeback performance in ending the unbeaten record of local favorite Cung Le in what was the show’s main event.
Le (6-1) was the star the Strikeforce promotion, before MMA was legal in California and it was a kickboxing organization, was built around during the 1990s. An unbeaten San Shou fighter (a sport that combined kickboxing with takedowns, but no ground work), dominated the entire fight. He scored three knockdowns, and befuddled Smith with his usual array with side kicks and spinning kicks that are only supposed to work on the movie set, and not in MMA fights.
But it was evident even as he was dominating Smith that he was breathing heavily, particularly when he tried to slow the fight down in the second round, holding Smith against the cage in an attempt to regain his wind.
Le, now 37, hadn’t fought since March 29, 2008, and like so many fighters in the past who ventured into the movie world, came back and was missing the edge that he had when he was younger.
Like his classic fight in April with Benji Radach, Smith came back from almost certain defeat with a Hail Mary like finish, a hard left that suddenly put Le in trouble. After putting Le down a second time, after a few punches on the ground, referee John McCarthy stopped the fight.
“He caught me with a punch,” said Le immediately after the fight. I did my best. I fought my heart out and he fought his heart out. He just caught me with a punch. You win some and you lose some.”
The key blow was a left hook that came out of nowhere.
“My left hook is really my best punch eve though people think it’s my right,” said Smith. “He was waiting for the right and I brought the left hook in and caught him.”
“I think maybe I need someone to beat the hell out of me before I go out there,” said Smith (17-6). “I almost always lose the first round.”
Smith, who has made a career of providing memorable knockouts, one in UFC against Pete Spratt that is considered one of the greatest finishes in the history of that organization, the Radach fight, and this, given how badly he was losing the fight and was nearly stopped, being another one.
After Le’s first knockdown, he pummeled Smith with hard punches on the ground as Smith just tried to cover up. He blocked some punches and others were getting through. Many, if not most referees would have stopped it, and McCarthy told Smith he’d better get out of trouble, and the urgency of the situation got him back to his feet.
In the television opener of the Showtime card, Muhammad “King Mo” Lawal (6-0), a natural middleweight fighting as a 218-pound heavyweight, finished veteran Mike Whitehead (24-7) after knocking him down and finishing him with punches on the ground in 3:08 of the first round.
Mo, who came to the cage with a group of dancing girls, wearing a crown, and walking under an umbrella, was originally scheduled to face Whitehead at light heavyweight. However, Whitehead, who in the past has cut from as heavy as 275 pounds to 205, asked for the fight at heavyweight and came in at 261 pounds.
The U.S. debut of former Brazilian Jiu Jitsu world champion Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza (11-2, 1 no contest) was also successful, stopping former top five middleweight Matt Lindland (21-7) with an arm triangle submission at 4:18 of the first round.yahoo.com
Donald Cerrone isn’t going to be named mixed martial arts Fighter of the Year, except, perhaps, by his family. He probably won’t get a vote for it, either. He needs a win over Ed Ratcliff on Saturday at WEC 45 at The Pearl at The Palms simply to end the year with a break-even mark. But if you’re the type that likes jaw-dropping action just about every time out, then Cerrone is most definitely your man. More From Kevin Iole
Cerrone entered 2009 with a 9-0 record, 10-0 if you count a 2007 victory that was erased and changed to a no contest when he tested positive for a diuretic. He goes into the Ratcliff fight with a 10-2 record, but there are few fighters on the World Extreme Cagefighting roster other than featherweight champion Jose Aldo who are more routinely exciting than Cerrone. His loss to Ben Henderson in October is being hailed by some as the 2009 Fight of the Year. His controversial defeat to bitter – perhaps hated – rival Jamie Varner in January was Fight of the Night and was another one that was stunning in its brutality. And he closed 2008 with a Fight of the Night effort in a win over “Razor” Rob McCullough. Yet, as much as he’s become a crowd favorite, the crowd has little impact upon him as he’s fighting. He’s a fierce competitor who is constantly looking for a finish and that, more than trying to get a rise out of the audience, is what fuels him. “I think I more feed off my opponent than anything else,” Cerrone said. “When I feel him getting weaker and tired, I’m more motivated to push harder and keep going forward. I really don’t feed off the crowd. You don’t even know the crowd’s there, to be honest. It’s crazy. “It’s hard to explain. You see them when you walk out, but once you start fighting, you have no idea (that they’re there). You’re so into the zone and focused on what you’re doing you don’t realize it.” His fight with Henderson was an MMA classic that featured all aspects of the sport: There were huge punches and kicks landed, numerous submission attempts and fast scrambles. Henderson won a close decision that was hotly disputed. Cerrone, a blunt speaker who never hesitates to say what’s on his mind, oddly didn’t disagree. He said he thought Henderson won the fight, despite public sentiment that disagreed. In his view, the bout came down to how the first round was judged. Cerrone had a series of near-submissions, but Henderson managed to fight all of them off to survive. “With the judging now, if you’re a wrestler and you’ve taken someone down and you control him, they’ll give you the fight,” Cerrone said. “It’s weird, but it’s like they don’t give you any points for submission attempts, points for getting up. It’s like a weird scoring system. It’s something they need to work on. But shoulda, woulda, coulda. There’s nothing I can do about it now. “I had my 25 minutes to do what I could. I’m not going to complain and say I should have won. I’m going to be a humble guy and say, ‘Ben, good job. I think he won it,’ even if I don’t totally agree with it.” One thing he’s certain of is the fact he’ll defeat Ratcliff on Saturday. He didn’t mince words in his assessment of how the fight will go. Ratcliff, he said, isn’t in his league as a fighter and he’ll prove that on Saturday. “I can pretty much win this fight anywhere,” Cerrone said. “My wrestling is better than his, my jiu-jitsu is way better than his and my standup, I’ve been doing it way longer than him. I don’t feel like he poses a threat to me in any area. I feel like I can end the fight pretty much where I want.” He’ll get a much stiffer test if and when he gets the chance to meet Aldo, the dynamic featherweight champion. Cerrone isn’t planning a full-time move to 145, but said he can make the weight and would like to challenge several of the top featherweights. That could set the possibility that he’ll fight for both the lightweight and the featherweight belt in 2010. “That would be awesome,” Cerrone said. “But the bottom line in all of this is that I think it’s about big fights, more than anything else. I don’t want to fight guys that mean nothing. I want to take risks, to fight guys who are dangerous and who will get people talking. My whole motivation in this is to challenge myself and fight the best guys in the world.”
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Strikeforce
When Strikeforce announced nearly one year ago its deal with Showtime and CBS, Josh Thomson, the promotion’s lightweight champion, was in the position to make himself a national star. One year and two broken ankles later, Thomson has to chalk up 2009 as a learning experience. “I learned that my career could be over at any time, and that you have to save your money,” said Thomson, who gets back into the cage on Saturday night for the final Showtime MMA event of the year. “It was frustrating. I was hoping to fight on CBS this year.” More From D. Meltzer
Josh Thomson expects to go the distance when he faces Gilbert Melendez.(MMAWeekly) His opponent at San Jose’s HP Pavilion is also a familiar one: Gilbert Melendez, who Thomson (16-2, 1 no-contest) meets in a rematch to unify Strikeforce’s split 155-pound title. The two were good friends three years ago, trained together and never expected to fight each other. But they ended up as the top two lightweight fighters in the company and it became a natural match to make. Melendez said that he’s not the type of person who can fight a friend, so he cut off the friendship. “I have to dislike my opponent,” Melendez (16-2) said. “I’m not the guy who is going to high-five my opponent during the fight. It’s not me.” Thomson also learned a lesson about patience outside the cage that Melendez likely learned inside during their first match. The first meeting between the two on June 27, 2008, also in San Jose, ended up as the biggest win of Thomson’s career. A significant underdog against a consensus-top 10 fighter at the time, Thomson was able to pick apart Melendez and negate his wrestling for five rounds in winning a straight 50-45 decision. While watching the fight, it seemed like Thomson knew every move Melendez was going to make and when. Thomson had the edge in every aspect of the bout, handing Melendez the first and only one-sided defeat of his career. “I didn’t perform to the best of my abilities that night,” said Melendez. “I had trouble sleeping because of it.” But if Thomson’s instincts and premonitions were a key to winning the last fight, he said those same instincts tell him this fight is going to be nothing like the first one. “I think it’s going to be way different,” said Thomson, known around MMA circles as “The Punk,” a nickname he admitted he probably once deserved but, at 31, is one he no longer embraces. “It will be nothing like the first fight.” The only similarity is that he expects Saturday’s fight to go the distance. “I think it’s going all five,” he said. “He’s super hard to knock out [Melendez has never been knocked out or submitted in his career]. He’s got a good chin. He’s got conditioning. I think my ground game is better than his. I got his back and was working for a choke in the fourth round (of the first fight). “There’s a good chance it’ll go five rounds,” said the 27-year-old Melendez. “But I’ll be looking to finish. I’m not looking at sticking and moving and looking to win rounds. I’m going to throw every punch with bad intentions, with the idea of knocking him out.” “What I learned from the last fight, if I’m going to be in this sport, I have to bring my ‘A’ game every time,” said Melendez, who trains out of his own gym in San Francisco. “Josh took it to me every round last time. Now I’m going to be more prepared. What I learned was I want to be a fighter and if I want to be a true fighter, I have to bring my ‘A’ game every time.” Just minutes after their first match ended, Melendez asked for a rematch and Thomson said he was willing. With Thomson being a San Jose native and Melendez, who grew up in Southern California, but has lived in San Francisco for years, it was natural to bring the match back to San Jose, and it was set for April 11, when Strikeforce and Showtime did the first show on their contract. Ten days before the fight, Thomson broke his fibula in training. He underwent surgery and had a plate and eight screws inserted. Thomson thought he had made a quick comeback and had signed for the next San Jose show, on August 15, on the Gina Carano vs. Cris “Cyborg” Santos undercard. But in late training, the fibula broke in a new place, just above the top screw, which he attributes to a rushed comeback in hopes of not missing such a high-profile show. It has been 15 months since Thomson’s last fight. He admits when asked about potential ring rust that there is nothing you can do in training to replicate a real fight with thousands of people watching. But he’s modified his training. Thomson has eliminated most of his running to avoid unnecessary stress on the bad leg, trying to get his cardio from riding an Airdyne Exercise bicycle and lots of swimming. He also eliminated kicking hard in training until three weeks ago. But, he added, if he loses, none of this will serve as an excuse. “I don’t want the media to make any excuses if I go out there and he beats me fair and square,” said Thomson. “I don’t want people thinking he beat me because I had all this time off or ring rust or whatever. I’m telling you right now, I’m 100 percent. I’m ready to fight. And if he beats me, it’s because he was the better fighter that night. There is nothing else to it. I want to make that clear to the media now, and to everyone who talks to me, and to all my friends, and even to the guy who comes up to me in an alley way and says something to me. I’m 100 percent. I’m ready to fight, and I’m ready to bring my title home.” While Thomson was out of action, Melendez overwhelmed Rodrigo Damm to become interim lightweight champion. When the unification match in August fell through, Strikeforce brought in Mitsuhiro Ishida, who had handed Melendez his first career loss, via a close decision, on the 2007 New Year’s Eve show in Japan. Melendez dominated Ishida in the rematch, winning via stoppage in the third round. But while he retained the interim belt, he never considered it a real championship, and wouldn’t even wear it to the ring in his last fight. “That was awesome,” Melendez said about avenging his first loss. “I wanted to get them one off my chest for almost two years.” But he said this is different, as he considered Ishida a fight that was close and he could have won, while admits he was completely dominated by Thomson. He also noted with Ishida, there was a simple game plan of keeping the fight standing, whereas Thomson you doesn’t have an obvious weakness to exploit. Strikeforce promoter Scott Coker has talked about having the winner face Shinya Aoki, the lightweight champion of Dream, who is generally regarded as Japan’s top lightweight. “The Japanese fighters don’t seem to do as well when they fight here,” said Thomson, about a match, where if he would win, would vault him up to near the top of most rankings in the division. “I match up well with him. I don’t think he can take me down and he can’t stand up with me.”ufcyahoo.com
There are a lot of good lightweight fighters in the world. There is, however, only one great one. And while B.J. Penn proved his greatness yet again with a dominant fifth-round stoppage of Diego Sanchez in their lightweight title bout Saturday at UFC 107 in the FedEx Forum, he created something of a problem for Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White and matchmaker Joe Silva: Whom do you match with Penn at 155 who can even remotely give him a close fight? More From Kevin Iole There doesn’t appear to be anyone on the horizon. Gray Maynard is likely next up, and Frankie Edgar is on a roll. Neither, though, seem to have the all-around game that Penn possesses and that they’ll need to survive 25 minutes in the cage with him, much less win. Jose Aldo, the featherweight champion in World Extreme Cagefighting, has the frame and the ability, but he’s probably at least a year, if not more, away from being ready to move up and fight at lightweight. By that time, Penn will likely be butting heads with the welterweights with the goal of securing another bout with welterweight kingpin Georges St. Pierre. “It’s hard to pick out any weaknesses in B.J.,” said heavyweight Frank Mir, who was exceptionally impressive in his own right Saturday in a first-round stoppage of Cheick Kongo. “First and foremost, he’s a great athlete, which is a phenomenal foundation to start off with. But like Dana said, that’s kind of what he coasted on before. He’s a great technician when it comes to submissions and also striking.” Sanchez’s face was grotesquely beaten. The fight was stopped after a head kick from Penn, a knee and then a series of uppercuts. One of those blows – likely the head kick – opened a massive gash on Sanchez’s head. Both of his eyes were swollen and nearly shut. It appeared his nose was broken. His lip was split in two places. He was bleeding from his right ear. You don’t have to be squeamish to have gotten a bit nauseous looking at the destruction on his face. “In 10 years of being in this business, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anybody more busted up than Diego is right now,” White said. “His whole lip is split open in half, in two different places. When I say split open, it’s torn down to this stuff down here [indicating a point on his chin]. His forehead is as open as [Marvin Eastman], the kid that Vitor Belfort kneed [at UFC 43]. They pulled that thing wide open. His face? I think his nose is broken. I don’t even know how Diego kept coming forward. He’s a tough kid, man. I’m almost positive his nose was broken by the third round. That Tony Robbins [expletive] works.” Nothing Sanchez did in the cage worked, though that’s probably not as much an indictment of him as it is a sign of Penn’s greatness. Penn knocked him down with a crushing punch early in the fight and nearly finished him on the ground. And though Sanchez tried to make it a fight, he didn’t have the kinds of weapons he needed. Penn’s hands were much faster and his boxing was much more technically proficient. He repeatedly raked Sanchez with counter right hands and punishing left hooks. Sanchez, a former high school wrestling state champion, couldn’t get Penn off his feet so he was never able to work his ground-and-pound. He had nothing else to resort to offensively and wound up repeatedly attempting kicks to the head in a futile attempt to gain some momentum. Penn watched the Nov. 14 boxing match between Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto while he was in his training camp and decided to try to emulate Pacquiao’s style on Saturday. “I just like watching Pacquiao and how he throws punches in bunches,” Penn said. “He’s so fast. You might get away from the first two or three, but the two or three that come behind that are going to hit you. I kind of figured that out.” The problem for Penn’s coaches are going to be keeping him motivated. In his last three lightweight title defenses, he dominated Sean Sherk, Kenny Florian and Sanchez, taking little abuse from any of them and doling out enormous amounts of punishment. There isn’t anybody markedly better than Florian – others may be as good – and yet no one has come close to Penn. “What B.J. really wants is to fight Georges St. Pierre,” Penn’s coach, Rudy Valentino, said. White said Penn may be two fights away from cleaning out the lightweight division, but said even if Penn does that, he’s not arbitrarily going to get an automatic title shot against St. Pierre. White said Penn would have to face whoever the No. 1 contender is at welterweight when it’s time to move up before getting a shot at St. Pierre. In the past three years, he’s lost three times, but all have been at welterweight. He was beaten twice by St. Pierre and once by Matt Hughes. Each is a much bigger man naturally and in the Hughes fight and the second St. Pierre fight, their size and physical strength was an issue. Mir suggested the only way a lightweight might be able to match that feat is to use wrestling, which both Maynard and Edgar have. “At this point, at 155 it’s hard to see who could really have a definitive shot at taking him out,” Mir said. “Maybe if you can wrestle him to death and keep a great position, but that’s hard to say with a guy who, if you go five rounds with, [it’s hard to make sure he doesn’t] knock you out or submit you.” Penn has so many weapons and so few weaknesses that unless you can overcome some of those advantages with size and strength, you’re likely going to need to find a good plastic surgeon, because Penn will rearrange your face. Sanchez entered the fight with a 23-2 record, with his only losses coming at welterweight in back-to-back bouts to Josh Koscheck and Jon Fitch. He dropped to lightweight this year and got his title shot by defeating Joe Stevenson and Clay Guida. Despite his many credentials, though, Sanchez looked like a beginner against Penn. “This is my sixth fight with him and he’s been dominant in pretty much all of them [except the St. Pierre fight],” Penn coach Jason Parillo said. “Some people thought the last fight with Kenny Florian was kind of close. I do not. I thought B.J. was dominating that fight, also. “He completely dominated tonight and I don’t think Diego belonged in the cage with him. That was my sense. You could see that from the opening bell. The first minute of the fight, B.J. had him on queer street and almost had him out of there. That was different class of fighters there.” It was. The same thing could be said, though, of the entire lightweight division. When Penn is in shape, which he’s been since hiring conditioning guru Marv Marinovich, and when he’s highly motivated, which he’s been since getting stopped by St. Pierre at UFC 94, he’s all but unbeatable at lightweight. The man to beat B.J. Penn at 155 pounds is going to be one special fighter. Penn, himself, is as good at that weight as any man ever has been. yahoo.com
Kimbo Slice is in the UFC. More shockingly, perhaps, is that he actually won in the UFC.
Seriously.
The one-time street brawler, who was mocked incessantly for more than a year by Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White, won a unanimous decision over Houston Alexander on Saturday at The Palms.
Related Video Watch UFC 107 on Y! Watch UFC 107 on Y!
More UFC Videos Related CoverageBlog: Kimbo is UFC certified More From Kevin IoleKimbo a winner in UFC debut Dec 5, 2009 Mitrione parlays villain role into big shot Dec 4, 2009 ADVERTISEMENT
The elite fighters in the heavyweight division, men like champion Brock Lesnar and contenders Shane Carwin, Cain Velasquez, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Frank Mir, among many others, have nothing to worry about.
Truth is, without denigrating Slice, there are more fighters in the UFC’s heavyweight (and light heavyweight) division that he can’t beat than there are that he can.
If he never wins another fight, though, it won’t matter.
Slice has made his point.
He was classy as White mocked him – “What,” White asked at a UFC 90 news conference in 2008, “has Kimbo Slice done other than get 10 million hits on YouTube to be in the UFC?” – and responded only by trying to become a better fighter.
White had snidely said that the only way Slice would ever find his way into the UFC was by going onto, and winning, “The Ultimate Fighter.”
Slice took him up on that offer and agreed to appear on the show, turning down an opportunity to box and another to fight K-1 kickboxing in Japan. And while he lost his first bout on the reality show to eventual champion Roy Nelson, who knocked out Brendan Schaub on Saturday, he hardly was out of place and by far was not the worst fighter in the house.
White wasn’t about to apologize for tweaking Slice so often, but he gave Slice his props.
“I don’t know what Houston Alexander’s corner was doing, but that was the worst game plan they could have ever come up with,” White, who was not at Saturday night’s postfight press conference, said in a phone interview. “I am not sure if Kalib Starnes was training him or what, but that wasn’t the Houston Alexander I had seen fight before.
“I don’t think I have to apologize to Kimbo. I helped him. I said what I did and he did the thing athletes do: He went out there and he worked and he made himself better. He deserves credit. He took me up on the offer I made, did what he had to do and went out and beat a legitimate UFC fighter.”
True to the way he’s been ever since he started in mixed martial arts, Slice went to the American Top Team in Coconut Grove, Fla., after filming ended in July in a bid to improve his game.
Slice (4-1) was clearly better than he had been when he left Elite XC after getting knocked out just 14 seconds into an Oct. 4, 2008, fight with light heavyweight Seth Petruzelli.
He was satisfied with the victory, though he wasn’t gloating. Asked if he felt he proved a point to the legion of skeptics who doubted he could make the transition, Slice nodded his head.
“I hope I did,” Slice said. “The goal was to come in and fight and to get the best training I could possibly get to be prepared for the standup or a ground game. Like I said, whether the fight goes to the ground or stands up, I wanted to come in and fight, but be smart about it.”
The fight on Saturday was ugly and what had seemed to be a slam-dunk slugfest degenerated into a boo-fest as fans in The Pearl became angry at the lack of action.
Alexander (9-5, 1 no-contest) spent the first round circling in the cage, rarely threatening a punch. He landed a few kicks as Slice simply held the center of the cage. Clearly, though, Alexander was wary of Slice’s power and was not eager to engage.
This is a guy who knocked out light heavyweight contender Keith Jardine, after all, but Alexander was exceptionally cautious of Slice. Slice, though, didn’t show his inexperience and didn’t take an unnecessary risk by rushing at Alexander.
“If I would have run in there foolishly, I would have gotten knocked out,” Slice said. “It wasn’t difficult to stay patient, but I was going, ‘Come on, man.’ A few times, I just called him out. I called him by his name and I said some things in the ring, like, ‘Let’s do this.’ I reverted back to the streets a little bit, verbally. He didn’t engage. He stuck to his plan, so I said to myself, ‘I’m not going to be foolish and run up on him.’ I wanted to be a smart fighter as well.”
He was a smart fighter on Saturday, but he was a better draw. Not counting Saturday, the season was by far the highest rated in the history of “The Ultimate Fighter.” The show averaged 3.4 million viewers per episode compared to an average of 2 million over the first nine seasons.
Ratings will come out on Tuesday for Saturday’s finale, and they should be equally large.
Whether Slice can maintain as that type of attraction is debatable because sooner or later it will come down to performance, and Slice has a long way to go before he can compete with the majority of the men in the UFC.
But this night wasn’t about the future. It was about a man who believed in himself despite massive ridicule from all corners, about ignoring the thousands of skeptics and chasing a dream.
Kimbo Slice may never become a superstar but he’s in the UFC, and that’s better than 99.9 percent of the men in the world.
“It’s hard,” Slice said of making the transition to MMA. “It’s not an easy thing. I first was a street fighter. Being a street fighter, there was no training in my style of fighting. I just went in there based on my instincts, watching the guy’s movement and countering him.
“But at this level of the game, as a professional fighter in the UFC, you have to be almost genius-like smart because you have all these dimensions to battle. You have to know when to counter and when to not hit and when to engage and when to try to wait it out.
“There’s a lot you have to go through. (I hope) this shows my maturity as a mixed martial artist.”
He has a lot of maturing left as an MMA fighter, but on this night, Kimbo Slice finally left the streets behind.
UFC 108. Consider: 
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