Whatever rating tonight’s episode of The Ultimate Fighter does, it’s a credit to the UFC marketing machine. They made people believe Kimbo had a shot tonight. They made people believe this was an event. Rashad told us Kimbo impressed him. Dana White told us Kimbo impressed him. He’s coming back in December, haven’t you heard?
From the beginning, Kimbo looked bad. He was extremely slow, moved gingerly, and left his chin wide open. He put his whole body into every jab, and frankly fought scared. Once he went down, he showed virtually no improvement from the last time we saw him on his back against James Thompson. Admittedly, Roy Nelson is on a different level from James Thompson on the ground, to say the least, but Kimbo showed me no reason to believe he will one day be able to compete in the UFC. I should note that his takedown defense was improved, but it obviously was nowhere near improved enough.
I suppose the more surprising part was Roy Nelson. He didn’t look particularly good either, and was shockingly gassed by the middle of the second round. I’m not quite sure how to describe his attitude…his arrogance is very off-putting considering his performance. He’s quite good on the ground, as we all knew, but everything about his performance tonight suggested to me that he will be dusted by the likes of Brock Lesnar, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Cain Velasquez, Shane Carwin, Junior Dos Santos, and others.
There have been rumors for days about putting Kimbo against a standup fighter in December to give him a chance to get a knockout. Maybe it will work. But Kimbo will never be a competitive UFC fighter; he’s too old to catch up in the wrestling and jiu-jitsu departments.
I hate writing this, because Kimbo is so easy to like. I want him to be good. If he was a great fighter, he could be such a massive crossover star. But we’re yet to find that star that is both a great fighter and a media icon. Perhaps that day will come, but for now, the search continues.
As far as Kimbo’s future goes, I suspect what we’ll see is a career of fighting in hand-picked fights against mid level strikers to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again. Don’t be surprised if we see Kimbo Slice vs. Houston Alexander in the UFC soon.