RRC Opinion: Anderson Silva, Kimbo Slice Stumble On Road To Superstardom

In our sports world, the term ‘superstar’ is one that is often handed out fairly easily and mostly with a well-thought out marketing push behind it. In all forms of combat sports, we’ve been audience to a parade of those that others would have us know and acknowledge as ‘superstars,’ those that transcend the business and simply stand out that much more than anyone else. Names like Mike Tyson, Randy Couture, Ken Shamrock, Tito Ortiz, Chuck Liddell and Oscar De La Hoya come immediately to mind as guys who performed up to the gold standard and, at times, became just as big as the sport in which they compete.

The road to push a superstar is either results-driven or need driven. Either a fighter becomes so good that it becomes their time to try on the crown or a division/promoter/other party needs someone to push that hopefully will fall backward into star status and get latched onto by the public.

This month, UFC Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva and former streetfight king Kimbo Slice were pushed as budding superstars, one recognized as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world and the other as the next big thing (sorry, Brock Lesnar) that was to lead EliteXC to a large public awareness victory over its UFC competition.

Oops. Cue record scratch sound effect. That didn’t work out too well.

Within weeks of each other, both Silva and Slice took major steps backward in their efforts to be recognized at that level. We all know what happened with Kimbo as part of the EliteXC disaster, but it is Silva that is more concerning and troubling. Saturday night, “The Spider” turned in a somewhat disappointing performance in a third-round TKO win over Patrick Cote as the French-Canadian couldn’t continue after hurting his knee. But it wasn’t the injury that upset fight fans and media members as much as Silva himself. The champion barely threw any punches or kicks in a very blase first round, instead moving around the ring and forcing Cote to chase him. He did pick up the pace in the second, but continued to display un-Silva-like qualities. At one point, he had Cote on his back and instead of going in for the kill, bizarrely offered his hand to help him up. One word really describes the fight: strange.

Silva’s effort couldn’t have come at a worse time. Like it or not, UFC is paying a penance due to the fallout from the EliteXC situation. They were running a new city in Chicago that is big for ppv numbers and is hot for mixed martial arts. With playing in a new major market comes attention from the mainstream press in that city and unfortunately, those uninformed writers and media types that are still learning the sport likely walked away more frustrated than satisfied.

Even UFC President Dana White – the guy that has a quote and a reason for seemingly everything – was a bit baffled with Silva, saying at the post-fight conference: “That’s not him. Okay, maybe he’ll move around a little bit, but then he lets those hands go. It was weird. Anderson Silva was in a different place tonight.” Eventually, Silva apologized to White and the fans but was it genuine? Did he realize what people were frustrated about?

What didn’t help was the gloss-over by UFC commentators Mike Goldberg and Joe Rogan who seemed like they were trying to put lipstick on a pig rather than tell it like it was. What didn’t help was Silva acting oblivious following the fight and asking the fans not to boo Cote for his injury, not fully understanding they were directing their anger at him. What didn’t help was that people wanted to see the killer and got a kitty instead.

Call it a mismatch, call it a good game plan by Silva, call it a bad fight, but you can’t call the UFC’s debut in Chicago a complete success because of that match - even with the record $2.8 million gate. Listen, we understand that bad fights happen, even with great fighters involved. It’s just that based on everything that happened here, we can’t seem to understand how it happened here in this city, weeks after SliceGate and with this fighter. No doubt the UFC will return, but it will take more effort than should be exerted to cleanse the palette of Silva vs. Cote.

One final note on Slice: I don’t feel like any of what happened to him is his fault. He was a creation of promoters that were behind 5-2 in the bottom of the ninth and needed to slug for home runs. Any promoter in that position would have done the same thing because there was simply no other option. With the potential built-in audience from the mainstream YouTube notoriety, the sports public became fascinated with the prospect of seeing a large black man destroy other people in a ring just like Tyson did decades earlier. How many times did you see him or hear him talked about on ESPN? Something clicked with a fickle sports media that is still woefully behind when it comes to their education on MMA. Bad or good, his aura brought more attention to EliteXC and MMA. Had Slice hit that home run, things might be different today.

Was Slice ready for main events? Definitely not, but if you had a multi-event deal with a major network that needed ratings, what would you do? We’ll see him again, but he was more a victim of the situation than anything. And yes, you’ll still be interested in Kimbo Slice. Don’t tell me you’re not.

Silva’s path to regaining his superstar status will be a hell of a lot easier than Slice’s, who will forever been seen as a failure unless he gets on a streak of big wins. But the fight world had their trust unexpectedly broken Saturday night by arguably the best fighter in the world...and it will be a long time before he completely earns that back.

Josh Nason has written and maintained Ropes, Ring and Cage since 2007. He can be reached at [e-mail].