Mixed Martial Bust

I will begin this entry by saying once again that I am not a fan of Mixed Martial Arts. It is just like Jon Stewart said: You can’t combine Karate and Wrestling, because then you get a poor version of each.

Mixed Martial Arts is like a phone that plays mp3s: you get a crappy phone and a crappy mp3 player. Also, I realize that every single person I am about to mention can kick the living crap out of me, and I respect that.  But they train to do one thing, and I train to do another. So please do not comment, “Man, all these guys can kick your ass,” because I already know that. Also, I would do anything to date Gina Carano.

With that said, here comes the entry…

To be a bust, according to my girl Merriam Webster, is to ruin something financially. Now, we as sports fans have stretched the term bust to describe incredibly disappointing early picks like Kwame Brown, Ryan Leaf and Bob Hamelin. But there were some serious financial busts as well in both sports organizations and sports media networks.

Major League Baseball lost a ton of money trying to sell jerseys in the “Turn Ahead The Clock” promotion of the late 1990s. The Yankees paid Roger Clemens more than $1 million per appearance in 07, and it accomplished nothing for them.

And who could forget NBC, who lost NFL broadcasting privileges for more than half a decade due to the incredible success of the XFL.

With all of this said, however, it is incredibly rare that you find an athlete who also tanks a business, a true-to-dictionary definition of a bust. Not just a team cancer, a terminal cancer. And the man who I am talking about is Kimbo Slice.

After losing in less than 20 seconds to Seth Petruzelli, Kimbo Slice is officially an MMA bust, and could single-handedly be responsible for the folding of his MMA company, Elite-XC.

Obviously, we know Slice’s background. It has been forced down the throats of America for the last year. He fought for money in the streets and literally mutilated the faces of other street fighters. But the key there is "street" fighters.

I don’t know a ton about the history of the Elite-XC, but the bottom line is I don’t actually care. And to be honest, I don’t even need to know their history to know exactly how this whole thing went down.

Some rich dude who owns EXC and can afford to make an investment goes: “Hey that street fighting guy over there…If we turn him loose in an MMA ring and he wins a few fights, he will be a ratings and sales monster.”

But it wasn’t just EXC, that had a rich dude ready to invest. CBS was ready to pounce on the idea of a prime time MMA special. And there is no doubt that EXC’s acquisition of Slice was a huge trump card for the company.

So CBS and EXC both bought into the formula, and the formula was right. I’m not even sure that EXC or CBS were in love with Kimbo Slice the person, but rather Kimbo Slice the idea.

Here is this monster who made an income by rearranging faces on the streets. What a perfect puppet for the entertainment of white America: The wild dog that became domesticated.

But as his MMA career began, there was no question that he was raw. But it was so easy to overlook his weaknesses simply because of how overwhelmingly intimidating and strong he was.

Then there was the first warning shot. On the EXC CBS debut, Slice was supposed to face, and more importantly, squash James Thompson, a mediocre fighter at best. Slice did win in by TKO, but nearly lost on two separate occasions. In fact, I honestly believe that the fight wasn’t called in the second round simply because everyone knew that he simply could not lose that fight.

Saturday night however, the fight had to be called, because Seth Petruzelli, who honest to god just looked happy to be there, beat him to the point that he could no longer defend himself, in less than 20 seconds.

The funny thing is that about a month ago, I wrote an article joking that that Ken Shamrock should bail last minute over an injury just so he could survive the intimidation machine that is Kimbo Slice.

Now I can’t help but think about how much worse this could have looked if it was Shamrock, an established name, absolutely laying a beating to Slice.

Everyone bought into the Kimbo Slice hype, even yours truly. But the curiosity of the American sports fan is one that is controlled by a flip switch and not a dimmer.

And after what will go down as one of the most disappointing prime-time performances in any sport, the switch was flipped for millions of fans who were willing to watch MMA, for Kimbo Slice the idea.