RIP Kimbo Slice?

Kimbo's dead!

What happened? Another tragic victim of pesticides?

 

This. And to think CBS made him the focus of its first MMA card.

 

Guy put MMA on the mainstream map. Remember when he was on the cover of ESPN the Magazine.

 

Um, I'm sorry he's dead and all, but this just isn't true at all.

 

Who cares?

 

People who are interested in the truth.

 

Not at all, huh? ask 100 people on the street if they know who roger Huerta is and then ask them if they know kimbo slice. Huerta was first mms guy on cover of SI and the average person couldn't pick him out of a lineup. Not true at all, that's laughable

 

How about Chuck Liddell?

Randy Couture?

Tito Ortiz?

Ken Shamrock?

Dan Severn?

Rampage Jackson?

Tank Abbott? Who, coincidentally, was pretty much a white Kimbo Slice 10 years earlier and without YouTube's help?

 

That's great to recognize the pioneers and all, but that's not what we were talking about. I said kimbo helped bring it mainstream. But somehow that was not true at all...Dan Severn, Tank Abbott, those are not names more well known by average sports fans than kimbo slice. Not denigrating their contributions

 

I'm not even an MMA guy, yet even I know this is horseshit. When did Kimbo become part of the MMA scene? Around 08 or 09 or so? By that point I believe MMA had already reached about the same level of mainstream-ness it has now. And, fwiw, I'll say I'd heard plenty about the guys listed in creosote's post long before I'd ever heard of Kimbo.

However, I think it is fair to say Kimbo was a titanic figure in the world of youtube backyard brawls against pot-bellied ex cons. But MMA? Not so much.

 

He's no Bobby Gunn.

 

Exactly. That night Kimbo lost on CBS, I'd bet more viewers knew his name compared to Severn, Abbott or Shamrock. I'll have to look it up now, but pretty sure it was Frank Shamrock who was supposed to fight Kimbo but was injured.