Dana White’s newfound respect for Kimbo Slice & Gary Shaw
Six months ago, Dana White was spouting off on how Kimbo Slice and Gary Shaw were hurting Mixed Martial Arts. Last October, Slice was involved in an embarrassing 13-second lost to last-minute replacement Seth Petruzelli in the main event of what would end up being the last ever Elite XC event on CBS. Gus Johnson called it the biggest upset in the history of MMA. Two days after Petruzelli’s ’shocking’ win over Kimbo, he went on Orlando radio and hinted that he was encouraged to keep the fight standing up. Petruzelli’s comments ended up costing a lot of fighters a lot of money.
It also brought on an ‘investigation’ from the Florida athletic commission, which was all show and little go. Dana White, UFC President, was furious about what had taken place. Gary Shaw’s big meal ticket, Kimbo Slice, was humiliated on national television and a stain was created on MMA. In an October 2008 interview placed on YouTube, Dana White held nothing back in terms of his disgust for both Gary Shaw and Kimbo Slice:
“The idiot Gary Shaw actually does an interview with the LA Times, OK? And he says that, ‘You know, we didn’t do anything wrong. There’s nothing wrong with paying a guy to stand-up. We got no problem doing that.’
Yes, you scumbag, there is a problem with that. Think about this, Mandalay Bay and The Venetian both had betting on this. You, the consumer, the mixed martial arts fan, could go in and bet on this fight. OK? Now anybody who’s going to bet on this fight is going to think, ‘Well if Seth Petruzelli can get him to the ground, the fight’s over. So I’m gonna bet, take a chance that Seth’s going to get him down and submit him.’ But you don’t know the scumbag promoters behind the scenes went in and paid him to not to go to the ground. They paid him to stand-up. You know why? Because they thought that Kimbo Slice was going to viciously knock him out.
But Kimbo Slick SUCKS! Like I’ve said now for the last few months. This fucking guy can’t fight and he got knocked out in 13 seconds by a guy who didn’t win the Ultimate Fighter and who didn’t win fights in the UFC.
They brought him up from the undercard to fight the main event guy and knocked him out in 13 seconds.
It would be like if the NFL, OK, there’s a game between the Patriots and the Browns, the NFL goes into the locker rooms and tells the players, ‘Listen, the Patriots pull higher ratings if they make it to the playoffs and the Super Bowl than the Browns do. So here’s what we’re going do.. the browns have a great running game. We’re gonna pay your team more money if you just pass tonight, don’t run. Because we need the Patriots to win and make it to the next level.’
THAT’S FUCKING ILLEGAL.
They’re being investigated by the Florida Athletic Commission, they oughta be investigated right now by the FBI too. Gary Shaw, if you think going to the ground is boring, and Jeremy Lappen and rapper-whatever-the-fuck-your-name is Shaw Jr., OK, that’s called Mixed Martial Arts. You fucking morons need to be in the kickboxing business. If that’s what you’re selling. You’re paying guys to stand up. They don’t care about mixed martial arts. These fucking jerkoffs are in it for the money. These guys want to come in, take a piece of the pie, and in it they don’t give a fuck if they destroy the whole sport. Me and my crew have been busting their ass for 10 years, to show people how amazing this sport is, the type of people that are involved in this sport, um, the athletes, how amazing they are, and you’re got these boxing scumbags trying to come in and fix fights. It’s unbelievable.”
When Elite XC died and Strikeforce picked up fighter contracts, one contract they did not pick up was Kimbo Slice’s contract. Dana White made sure to make fun of Elite XC whenever he could and he also made it a point to say that the only way Kimbo Slice would be in the UFC is if he signed up to participate on The Ultimate Fighter reality TV show.
Dana White ended up being correct. Kimbo Slice is now in Las Vegas for filiming of the next season of The Ultimate Fighter, which features Rashad Evans and Quinton Jackson as head coaches. The signing of Kimbo for TUF will hopefully revive what had become an incredibly stale television show that was drawing the minimum amount of casual fans.
However, the signing of Kimbo Slice by UFC should raises some interesting observations. First, it’s just another sign of how similar Dana White is to Vince McMahon. Both men now have a history in terms of mocking and bashing ‘aces’ from other companies only to do a complete u-turn and sign the men they attacked. Much in a similar fashion to McMahon, Dana White clearly wanted Kimbo Slice and got him on his own terms. Laughably, White got Kimbo while Gary Shaw was building up a media smokescreen that Kimbo was preparing to box. So, Dana White and Gary Shaw on the same team? I thought Gary Shaw was a boxing scumbag who was going to destroy Mixed Martial Arts?
Don’t get me wrong, Dana White made himself a no-lose business deal here. He got exactly what he wanted. However, to watch the upcoming charade that a lot of UFC water carriers in the media are going to parade is going to be completely nauseating to watch. Time after time, I’ve heard every excuse in the book as to why someone should be justified in associating with questionable figures. “It’s the fight business!” So, be prepared over the next several months in dealing with Kimbo Slice hype and media writers who so desperately want to curry favor with UFC to make every lame, pathetic, intellectually lazy excuse in the book to try to come up with different justifications for Kimbo Slice and UFC working together as being ‘good for the sport.’ It’s good for UFC’s pocket books, but is it ‘good’ for the sport? Depends on what you mean by that.
However, the biggest carny act of them all is Kimbo. Despite reportedly getting paid a high-six figure salary to fight Seth Petruzelli, Kimbo Slice is still pulling his “I gotta feed my family” carnival act. In a Dana White YouTube video blog on Tuesday, Slice on camera kept saying how he wanted to prove that he could fight ‘the Mixed Martial Arts style’ and how he needed to work to feed his family. The hilarious thing in watching Kimbo is how he continues to push this front and just how many fans continue to buy it. For all the disdain that a lot of MMA fans online have for professional wrestling fans, it sure seems the two audiences have a lot more in common than they really know.
The great irony in watching Dana White six months talk about how Kimbo Slice is bad for MMA is that now he’s Kimbo’s biggest pusher in the business. All the guys who tried to work with Kimbo Slice to make him into something in MMA (I’m looking at you, Bas Rutten) have to be shaking their heads and laughing at what is going on. Furthermore, what message is being sent by Zuffa to young, up-and-coming MMA fighters? For all the talk about how UFC is a real sport while PRIDE and other promotions were carnival acts, it sure feels like Dana White pulled a page right out of PRIDE’s playbook here to help bring some much-needed energy for his reality TV show.
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