Kimbo Slice flattened by Seth Petruzelli
Adding a new dimension to the word ‘invincible’
And that new dimension is ‘overrated hack.’ Losing in 14 seconds to a guy who had an 0-2 record in the UFC? “The most incredible victory in the history of mixed martial arts?” How much did CBS pay the announcer to embarrass himself?
The backstory is that Kimbo’s original opponent was to be Ken Shamrock, who had to bow out because of sparring injury. Seth “The Silverback” Petruzelli was the last minute substitute, with a MMA record of 9-4-0 going into last night’s event, including a lackluster record of 0-2 in UFC competition.
He ended the night flattening the internet sensation, Kimbo Slice, an athlete that was marketed as a fearsome, invincible fighting force, mostly because he was a scary looking big black man.
The biggest loser had to be Ken Shamrock, who blew his last decent payday. Given Kimbo’s performance, the old man might have even won, giving him a few more high profile paydays.
An exiting night at EliteXc Heat!
Also of interest:
I didn’t realize that Petruzelli was on The Ultimate Fighter (per the overzealous ring announcer). Did you notice Jerod Shaw apologizing to Kimbo, and Petruzelli demanding a contract? Also, Kimbo wasn’t hit “on the eyebrow” as Mauro said – he got rocked in the jaw and dropped. This ref also went over and tried to get Petruzelli off immediately to let “Payday Spice” up, but was ignored.
The biggest mistake was not having Verne Lavigne be the ref. He would have pulled Seth off for some phantom blow to the back of Bimbo Spice’s head and docked a point – waitaminnit…Thats what Mazzagati did in the Mir-Lesnar fight.
So how soon will Kimbo be back on the streets, homeless?
at $500,000 for 14 seconds…..thats about $1.68 Billion an hour. I think he’ll be all right. If worse comes to worst, He should get about $500 for that pimp chain he wears – He can sell it to one of those “sell your old gold” sites!
“If you’re willing to step into a cage, and fight for your life, you can be anything you want!” Warped logic aside, I guess Kimbo must have wanted to be: a loser!
I’m no follower of this so-called sport, but five or six punches . . . and the fight’s over?? After opening a couple of cuts? I thought these guys were supposed to be tough!
This debacle actually put the promoters, Elite XC, out of business!
Elite’s idea of paying to “fix” the fight IS illegal. There was valid betting going on at several casinos, and a fixed fight will bring the FBI and (FAR WORSE) the IRS into this. Check out Dana White’s comments on YouTube.
This investigation also killed the proposed Showtime purchase of the promotion. I am of mixed feelings about the demise of this promotion. I think that getting the Shaws out of MMA was necessary, but ultimately, it is fans that are hurt. Competition brings out the best of these promotions. If the UFC is, effectively, monopolistic then it is really the fans who suffer. Getting Anderson Silva on free cable to counter Affliction’s PPV was great!
Trev,
While Petruzelli has backtracked a bit on his comments, suggesting he misspoke or was misunderstood, I think his post-fight comment was pretty clear.
Elite XC ran a pretty foolish operation – buying up other MMA promotions, developing an expensive website, fancy Beverly Hills offices that reportedly cost them $100k a month.
That’s all fine if you’re making money, but Elite XC wasn’t making money. They are now mercifully out of the business. I wonder if Showtime will end up buying them in Bankruptcy court for pennies on the dollar, and just running it as relatively cheap programming that they can promote as an ‘event’ on their cable channel now and then.
Seems to me the next (only?) big fight they have to promote is Carano vs Cyborg. Remember what I always said about women’s MMA. Can women’s MMA draw as a main event? YES, but if they use my formula, and as a practical matter I think they can only to to that well once or twice.
Wait and see.
Elite clearly had no idea how to run a business. Gary Shaw was a boxing promoter and it seems that Jerred was even less qualified. They wanted all the trappings of success before they actually earned it. Purchasing other promotions – particularly the ones that they did – was dumb. The assets of a sports-event promotion are 1. the fighters contracts and 2. the video library. PRIDE had an extensive library that can be sold to fans for years. This is what we learned from the WWE purchase of WCW and ECW. Those videos are still selling very well, and can be recut with WWE stuf for great Wrestler history vids.
Back to Elite: Gina Carrano and Christine Santos’ MMA careers are over unless Tom Atencio likes women fighting, or they go to Japan. The UFC will never have it, not even in WEC. Most of the EXC fighters are effectively done too. The possibilities for UFC contracts are: Robbie Lawler, Jake Shields, Benji Radach, and Murillo “Ninja” Rua. The rest are out of luck. Of course, the upside is that Tito “look at me” Ortiz came off as even more of a jerk than he previously did (the contract bringing me to Elite is getting signed next week!) The downside is that we lose another outlet for MMA shows.