There has been a lot of debate over whether the Bellator 138 main event bout between Kimbo Slice and Ken Shamrock was fixed or not. The bout saw Shamrock come close to choking Slice out, only to get knocked out when the fight returned to the feet. To many, it looked way too convenient to play out in normal terms. To others, even the idea of fixing such a high-profile bout is absolute nonsense.
One of the people that thought it looked like it wasn’t on the level was UFC announcer Joe Rogan. He said as much on a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast:
“I gotta tell you right now, that fight looked fake as f**k. There’s a couple of things I don’t like about that fight. I don’t like that clinch, that long clinch that they had where they were mouth to ear. They were mouth to each other’s ears for a long time… How about the fact that when Ken did take him down he never hit him once? How about that? He never hit him! He had him down, he had him flattened out, he had his back and he’s not crashing him. He’s not blasting him with punches. He’s got him flattened out and he’s not hitting him. That doesn’t make any sense to me.”
On the other side of the coin, there was some controversy over whether Kimbo tapped while he was in danger of being choked out. Referee John McCarthy had the best view of the action, and he says that Kimbo did not tap, though it looked like he was thinking about it (via MMA Fighting):
“His hands came out during the choke, but he would have had to have made more of a continuous motion for me to say he was tapping,” McCarthy said. “In my opinion, that was a fighter contemplating tapping and then working through it.”
Regardless of exactly what happened, Kimbo won and will likely go forward with another fight in the promotion, while Shamrock is likely to retire.
About the author
