Excellent article on Kimbo, CBS, and MMA

[Krazikarl]

Nothing new at all (pretty much everything here has been said by somebody on these forums weeks ago), but its good to see a well written mainstream article on CBS/Kimbo:

Kimbo Slice, a one-time homeless man, one-time strip club bouncer, one-time backyard, back-alley brawler turned Internet sensation/big money mixed martial artist isn’t a problem. Only in America, right?

He’s said to be a great guy, a boot-strap success story who deserves everything coming to him. I’ve watched him maul “Adryan” a half dozen times alone. You have, or will, too.

Kimbo Slice being a street fighter, rather than a Brazilian jiu-jitsu or Muay Thai master, isn’t a problem either.

No, he isn’t the best and brightest in MMA. He’d probably get whipped in a second by the sport’s elite, as Tito Ortiz predicted. The beauty of the MMA, though, is you bring what you’ve got to the cage. Kimbo has those iron fists. Maybe it’s enough. Maybe it isn’t. We’d all like to find out. The day an old-school scrapper doesn’t have a place here will be a sad one.


And CBS choosing to broadcast an MMA card in prime time Saturday, a historic moment for this once fledgling sport, isn’t a problem.

The sport has taken off in a way few others have – fueled purely by fan interest. It stands in stark contrast to all the network airtime spent on sports propped up on political correctness or obligation. MMA long ago deserved network attention.

Individually, nothing is wrong with a shooting star such as Kimbo Slice fighting on Saturday’s EliteXC card on CBS.

Together, plenty is. In fact, practically everything is.

EliteXC is a desperate promotion that’s hemorrhaging money. It’s willing to sell anything, even a false portrait of its sport, to succeed.

Kimbo is a guy with unexpected and most likely fleeting earning potential; understandably he’s willing to cash in even if it means tomato-can opponents and an image so unfortunately stereotypical.

CBS is so focused on quick television ratings, it will present a cheap trick, lowest common denominator show. This, rather than an introduction to a sport that is treated with respect and patience could grow into a powerful property.

Everyone is using. Everyone is getting used. In the end, what will be left from this experiment?

Will MMA on CBS just be a short-run, freak show discarded by all, left to return to its true roots and better promotions after the circus has left town?


If this is, indeed, the most important card in the history of the sport, wouldn’t it be nice if it actually had some of the best fighters and best representatives of mixed martial arts?

Anderson Silva, B.J. Penn and Georges St. Pierre display what MMA is all about. Not menacing scowls and WWE-like personas, but unreal athletic ability, disciplined training and tremendous intelligence from fighters as multi-skilled as they are fearless.

If one of them were on CBS, it would force America to realize what MMA really is. Kimbo, who taps into our primal instincts, plays to what many think the sport is. Let Kimbo cash every check he can – good for him – but he plays to MMA’s difficult-to-shake reputation as “human cockfighting,” as Sen. John McCain once branded it.

Those days are, or should be, done, of course. Even McCain gives MMA his approval now. That’s mostly because of the work of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), far and away the major league of the sport.

CBS is about to show a minor league event with fancy production values. On the day the sport supposedly goes mainstream, it’s the big network – not the smaller committed outlets – that are playing to the sport’s worst instincts.

The fact the lowly Versus cable network will broadcast a far superior, double main event World Extreme Cagefighting card on Sunday, tells you what CBS thinks of the sport. Quality doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even have the best event of the weekend.


Here’s the troubling difference between rival organizations UFC and EliteXC.

UFC has run the sport understanding that its popularity could be greater than the sum of its parts. EliteXC, especially with its biggest star, appears to be eschewing investment in the long term.

Earlier this year the UFC welcomed former WWE and amateur wrestling star Brock Lesnar, who, in some ways, could be called its Kimbo. Lesnar, a former NCAA wrestling champ, is far more skilled, that isn’t the comparison here. The similarity is that Lesnar arrived with great fanfare and curiosity. Everyone wanted to see what he could really do.

The old way of thinking, the boxing way, would be to match him up against an overwhelmed opponent and cash in on some easy victories as he was brought along slowly.

UFC president Dana White, however, stuck to his league’s core belief that you either prove yourself or you go home. There are no padded records or kid glove scheduling in the UFC. If Lesnar was for real, he would have to prove it. If not, see ya. It’s what fight fans covet. It’s why the UFC has thrived.

In February, White matched Lesnar up against the kind of fighter that could beat him, Frank Mir, an experienced former heavy weight champion and submission expert. The fight was thrilling, Lesnar almost knocked out Mir until Mir’s superior skill earned him a submission.

Lesnar lost. His second fight, against dangerous Heath Herring in August, could leave him 0-2 in the UFC and facing an unsure future. That’s the deal with the UFC. It’s real. So real, White is willing to run one of his biggest stars right out of the game.

Kimbo hasn’t fought anyone nearly as good as Mir or Herring. Who knows if he ever will? EliteXC and CBS are running his career like a boxer, even if trumped up records and mismatch fights have severely damaged that sports’ popularity.

Based on that mentality, you can understand why White was willing to walk away from the CBS exposure that, done properly, would have shot his league into the stratosphere. Obviously, he didn’t feel it was going to be done properly.

Saturday’s card is not set up to show the best of mixed martial arts and introduce America to a sport it would likely embrace.

If CBS was trying to build serious interest in football, it wouldn’t trot out an unproven pro team against a doomed high school squad and call the ensuing blowout the best the game offers.

It’d get the New England Patriots and the New York Giants and let people see the real deal.

But neither the network nor EliteXC are treating the sport or Kimbo Slice as anything but disposable programming. And that’s the problem here.

From: Kimbo not the face of MMA - MMA - Yahoo! Sports

This is the insightful bit:

EliteXC is a desperate promotion that’s hemorrhaging money. It’s willing to sell anything, even a false portrait of its sport, to succeed.

Kimbo is a guy with unexpected and most likely fleeting earning potential; understandably he’s willing to cash in even if it means tomato-can opponents and an image so unfortunately stereotypical.

CBS is so focused on quick television ratings, it will present a cheap trick, lowest common denominator show. This, rather than an introduction to a sport that is treated with respect and patience could grow into a powerful property.

Yeah, Kimbo, CBS, and EliteXC do well, but the show will certainly present a false picture of the sport to the casual and potential fan. And I'm not sure thats a good thing. In fact, I'm pretty sure that its not. I'm all for cheering on non UFC organizations like Affliction and DREAM who put forward cards that are great for the sport, but I'm a little frustrated at how much people cheer on orgs like EliteXC who will really sell out the sport to make a dime at times just because they arent the UFC.

[Ifightforaliving]

good article and I agree with you krazikarl

[dagreat1]

My favorite part of the article was his mention of the UFC.

[TyrLegend]

I've been saying this for a while too. I think by putting Kimbo on national television they're playing up to the monster/barbarian image that mainstream america has given mma. Give a kimbo interview, the press feeling like spinning things the way they do, and our sport will have the blackest eye its gotten to date

[atj-lucko]

The only way Kimbo will be bad for MMA is if he kills Thompson this Saturday.

I don't see what WWE-like personas has to do with Kimbo, Ken Shamrock and Dan Servrn both wrestled for WWE and thats somehow bad for MMA?
Tito Ortiz would be perfect in wrestling he has tons of charisma and great mic skills and he has a amateur wrestling background, IMO he do really good in the WWE so that somehow bad?

Seems like this is just more Kimbo bashing, again he trains with Bas and his workouts are no joke. Bas is trying to make him legit and who has something bad to say about Bas.

The bottom line is like it or not the masses want to see knockouts not 2 guys laying on each other.

The sky is not falling, MMA will live on beyond Kimbo, nobody is bigger than the sport.

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Awesome interview with kimbo and bas
Hit the play button

[Diegonightmare]

Originally Posted by atj-lucko

Seems like this is just more Kimbo bashing, again he trains with Bas and his workouts are no joke. Bas is trying to make him legit and who has something bad to say about Bas.

I don't think it's "Kimbo bashing", the article went to great lengths to say the author didn't judge Kimbo for anything he has done or is doing.

The problem is that choosing this ex-street fighter who visually looks the part, and turning that guy into the headliner on what is unarguably MMA's most important stage, plays directly into what the uneducated masses think MMA is and what we here all know it isn't.

At such a critical time when they (by "they" I mean CBS and whatever org they chose to go with) could put MMA over by showing America what MMA really is, they deliberately choose as the headlining event what MMA definitely is not.

We on these boards all understand that; the MMA-uneducated masses don't and can't be expected to work to draw those conclusions.

The author does a terrific job of dissecting that scenario and explaining why it is a problem, and I couldn't say it better than he did so I won't try.

Originally Posted by atj-lucko

The bottom line is like it or not the masses want to see knockouts not 2 guys laying on each other.

It's not about knockouts vs. groundfighting. Put Chuck Liddell and Wandy in there on CBS, do a great job marketing it and telling the back story, and you'll have accomplished both goals - putting MMA's best foot forward, and taking the sport into the stratosphere.

So brawlers/KO artists vs. skilled ground technicians is a false (IMO) view of what's wrong with this Elite/CBS premiere. Beyond which, I disagree with you that America wouldn't embrace ground fighting if the fighters shown were true MMA artists - BJ Penn, GSP, got to mention my boy Diego Sanchez - rather than truly, as you say "laying on each other". You want a Penn or a Nogueira, not a Koscheck.

I think Americans would thrill at watching a sick ground fighter go to work. It would expand their impressions of what fighting is, what the sport of MMA is, and what is and isn't possible - exactly as Jim Brown crystallized into a perfect quote after UFC 1 when he said "what we learned here today is that fighting is not what we thought it was".

Instead, what we have (at least for the main event) is what we all know to be a freakshow. The author's analogy of an unproven pro team vs. a high school squad was dead on. I don't see how anyone could view that sober assessment as mere "Kimbo-bashing".

[Greenish]

Yea, it ha nothing to do with ground vs sluging, Kimbo is simple being feed tomato cans and has-beens to make a quick buck.

I just sent message bellow to writer of article, just to show my appreciation.


"Hi!

Very nice article about Kimbo/EliteXC man, I'm impressed to see a mainstream journalist write this insightfull article. Keep up the good work!"

Here's link if anybody else feels for it: MMA - Ask Dan: Send Wetzel a question Feedback - Yahoo! Sports

[hunterkiller]

Is this article written by Dana White under a pseudonym?

I agree whole heartedly with the parts about Kimbo but if you remove him from the card, you have a pretty decent and UPSTANDING card by an organization that is trying to survive. Gina Carrano's fight is great for the sport and Robbie Lawler-Scott Smith is about 2 gifted athletes not a freak show to sell tickets.

As for saying the UFC doesn't pad their fighters records, that's crap. Yea, they threw Lesnar in the fire but there are a bunch of other fighters who get thrown cans to pad the record. Not nearly as bad as Elite does but it does happen. The UFC is still the king of MMA though and I wish it were them getting the network deal.

[earle]

The author makes some good points, and I think the dancing girls at Elite shows make it look sleazy. Then again, one of the UFC ring girls (Edith) has a questionable past.

There's two sides to every story, and for all the bad points about the Elite show, there are some good ones. Like the fact that overall, Kimbo has probably brought more casual fans to MMA than any other one fighter.

The author says Elite is not the best show of the weekend, but in my opinion, the quality of the Elite shows is not that bad, Edwards vs. Berto was a great fight, so are Jake Shield's fights, Shamrock vs. Le was a classic. UFC has produced some real crappy shows too, like ATJ said, there have been some real lay n' pray eggs.

In terms of the quality of fighters, I think Elite shows are at least as good as WEC shows. I'd take Gilbert Melenedez over any WEC LW, I'd also take Jake Shields over Carlos Condit. I think Robbie Lawler, Joey V, Shamrock or Le could hang with any WEC MW.

[tmlfan]

the more I read the more I dont like the idea of this...

and the beginning makes it seem like Kimbo was plucked straight from under a bridge where he was living... no mention that he was university etc.... uggh