I am Kimbo, Hear me Roar
Well the highly touted primetime network TV debut of MMA (mixed martial arts for those not in the know) has come and gone and hopefully it doesnt happen again. CBS basically made a mockery of true MMA, it was a second rate league (Elite XC who is only known because of two fighters) and a second rate production. It started off with about 30 minutes of build up for a bunch of fights that no one cared about. And focused more on the dancing girls than the fighters. the only reason most were watching was because of Kimbo Slice who I'll get to in a second. It started with a fight with two guys no one has ever heard of, yet they trot out Busta Ryhmes to bring out the first guy. That fight promptly ended about 20 seconds later. Then the spend another 20 minutes talking about some Baroni guy (more like Jabroni..LOL...thats for you James) The supposed New York Bad Ass, took about 10 minutes to get to the ring and lasted about 10 seconds in it. Why they were hyping this guy who had lost 3 of his last 4 fights I'll never know. Then they trot out the women fighters (I'm sure they only did this for the sideshow aspect) all though this was one of the better fights, Gina Carrono who for some reason has become the supposed face of women's MMA (probably because she can kind of fight but she is pretty...she's the Anna Kournikova of MMA). She put on a good show but you could tell she got really winded she had a lot of trouble finishing the fight and the doctors stopped it after 2 rounds. The next fight was actually the best one of the night Robbie Lawler and Scott Smith started off slow but really started going at it in the second round then in the third Smith took an accidental poke in the eye and they had to stop the fight, this was unfortunate because had this fight kept going at the pace it was it might have saved some face for CBS. Then came the big match Kimbo Slice v. John Thompson, the annoucers touted it as the greatest MMA fight ever despite the fact that neither of these fighters really deserved to be headlining a show Kimbo who made a name for himself in no holds fights on the internet is still learning the game of MMA and it showed. As for Thompson he is a once strong MMA fighter who is on his way down. Thompson looked like he had an alien growth on his ear and really dominated the fight early on at the end of the second round he had Kimbo pinned against the cage and rained about 20 elbows right to his face, you could tell Kimbo had no idea what to do and the fight probably should have been stopped (but that would have meant the end of CBS's golden boy) Kimbo survived and then in the third round finally land a shot on the ear of Thompson and popped the growth, shortly after that the ref stopped it (much to Thompson's shagrin who nearly took to hitting the ref instead of Kimbo) All in all it was a dissapointing show and if CBS wants to try this again they need to watch the WEC show from Sunday and take some serious notes. Versus put on a great show (honestly this show could have been PPV and would have been well worth the money) Every fight was good, and the show focused on the fighters not girls ( The only sign of pretty girls was a few shots in the crowd and one of the officers leading the fighters to the ring...LOL) The Co-Main Events truly stole the show and dwarfed CBS's whole show by themselves.
This is how its done CBS
The first was Torres vs Maeda for the Bantam weight title, These two put on one hell of a war and at one point had competing ankle locks on each other where it looked like both might wind up with broken feet. The fight ended after 3 rounds only because Maeda's left eye had become so swollen he litteraly couldn't see out of it. Then came the big daddy...Urijah Faber versus Jens Pulver...these two are arguably the two best 145 pound fighters out there and they had an all out brawl Faber kept landing shots and Pulver coming at him landing shots of his own, not to many thought the fight would go the distance and no one thought Faber had the stand up game he had because he had steamrolled most of his oppents prior. These two put on the fight of the year and I only hope that people who watched the CBS show and got turned off get a chance to see this fight to see what MMA is really all about.
True MMA Fighters
