Kimbo, Ref Pay-offs, B/R Respect: James "The Colossus" Thompson Interview, Pt 2

I am just going to dive right in here for the second half of this article. Please feel free to read Part One, if you have not already done so.

On with the show...

Marco: So let me move on and get to the nitty gritty as it were...

James: You just said that with some crappy Mexican accent. That reminds me, thanks for telling me about that steaming pile of a movie. No actually it was pretty funny—escalito!

Marco: Nacho Libre rocks man and you shouldn’t laugh—the way things have been going for you lately, you might just find yourself in a ring with Satan’s Dwarfs!

James: I’m going to kick your ass for that.

Marco: ...OK, let me ask you my question!

There has been a lot of speculation in many expert MMA circles that you in fact tossed that fight with Kimbo Slice at the instruction of Kimbo’s manager/promoter. Is this true? Were you paid money to go easy on Kimbo?

James: Well...No. In fact I wanted to win that fight. I wasn’t paid any money to go easy on Kimbo. What we had was a sort of "gentleman’s agreement." I knew I was picked for that fight in order to build up Kimbo—I knew that since the very first phone call.

The thing is, I was asked to allow Kimbo to display a wider variety of skills. This meant that they wanted me to take it to the ground at some point. They also wanted a stand-up exchange. One of the reasons they picked me is that they knew I could provide both. They also wanted me to refrain from my usual "gong and dash" as it were.

They never said “Let Kmbo win.” There was no payoff, only a "gentleman’s agreement." I would find out later that making agreements with Kimbo’s manager is not a good idea.

Marco: So they wanted you to go easy on him and allow him to showcase different MMA skills? They never offered you money to do that?

James: Yes and no respectively.

Marco: OK, so you wanted to beat him—at what point did you start to turn it on?

James: Look, I wanted to win that fight from the start. Winning a main event in the States would have been very good for my career. I agreed to “go easy" on Kimbo for a while, but I never said I would throw the fight.

I knew something was not on the up and up when Kimbo tapped out from that standing guillotine I put him in. The ref is standing five feet away and he doesn’t see it. I'll tell you right now, that the ref for that fight was paid to “not see that sort of thing.”

I think that is pretty daft considering I could have snapped the man’s neck. For the sake of decency, I let up a little. I gave him some ground and pound and I knew I was winning by a wide margin going into the third round. All I had to do was not suffer a 10-8 round or get knocked out, you know, and the fight was mine.

Naturally it was stopped when my ear burst—I’m still very angry that I gave them the excuse, the way out as it were. I gave them a reason to stop the fight. I swear to this day that my bleeding ear did not affect my vision or my breathing at any time. They just didn’t want the fight to go to the scorecards, you know, because I had beaten his ass for the entire fight, even after allowing him to “showcase his skills."

So that was a bad day for me and it had later repercussions.

Marco: How is the ear now? And by the way I agree, that stoppage was crap. Almost as bad as another one I can think of, but won't mention yet.

James: I’m not sure I like where this is going (laughs). The ear will never be quite the same, but people don’t exactly run away from me. I have my charming personality to make up for it.

Marco: Yeah, I think I heard you mention that in a radio interview not too long ago.

Let me ask you this: What happened with Butterbean? I mean, you have the victory snatched away from you in the Kimbo fight and then the ref in your Esch encounter stopped the fight almost instantly following a small clip and slip that put you on the ground. Please explain this one to me.

James: Well the thing that is significant about that fight and the way it went had a lot to do with the ref. He had recently been fined and almost fired for allowing a fight to go too long. So he calls this one the first chance he gets.

I was so angry, I cannot tell you.

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