![]() ![]() Four months later, after the legendary Ken Shamrock was forced to pull out of a fight with Slice, replacement Seth Petruzelli dismantled the internet hero in a 14-second TKO. Read this essential, empathetic Dan Le Batard account from months before a controversial win over James Thompson. He slugged his way into Dana White’s UFC - after being billed as the star of EliteXC and CBS’s Saturday Night Fights in 2008 and appearing on The Ultimate Fighter in 2009 - but was quickly demystified. Slice fought - and defeated - an over-the-hill Tank Abbott in 2008. Still there were glimmers: He knocked Bo Cantrell out in 19 seconds in 2007. The cracks began to appear when Sean Gannon, the Boston cop with the countenance of a stuck pig, crushed Slice in a basement in 2004. (But what long, swooping punches - it was like watching felled logs used for jump rope.) ![]() Slice was just a punch-thrower with a big rep and, ultimately, a tarnished record. But this was no merchant of death or even the heavyweight American answer to the Gracie clan. A YouTube star in the old-fashioned sense - the bridge between underground Faces of Death tape-trading and a mass market of exploitation commerce. (I can confirm at least eight.) He appeared to be what many young, craven, increasingly internet-addicted men sought: a monster and a myth. After his win, the handheld camera that had tracked Byrd’s demise follows Slice from the bare-knuckle backyard into a driveway - the lens gets close to Slice, who can be heard thundering, “All day. He just throws brick after fist-shaped brick. Kimbo has no technique, no grace, no ability to protect himself. When a divot above Byrd’s eye was sliced open and dripping crimson, thus abruptly ending the fight two minutes in, Kevin Ferguson became “Kimbo Slice.” The fight itself is less strategic conquest, more brute ballet. I first saw Ferguson, as did so many, on a website called, where his street fight with “Big D” Byrd - billed as his first - found the bearded, hulking Ferguson turn Byrd’s right ocular cavity into freshly shaved charcuterie. And to many who wouldn’t admit it, he was an icon to those familiar with the early, Miami-based online pornography company Reality Kings, for which Ferguson was a bodyguard and mascot/enforcer. The legend of Kimbo Slice came from a time that was unconquerable.įor many of a certain age, the Bahamian American fighter born Kevin Ferguson was a digital apparition before he was a person. ![]() The internet has made the world feel conquerable. Read the full interview with Kimbo Slice inside the May ’16 edition of Fighters Only.It feels like there isn’t anything that we can’t see, find, or know. To beat a former heavyweight champion of the world in my first MMA fight was an amazing moment for me. We won that fight in a minute and 12 seconds. OK, I have to take him down.’ There I am thinking like an MMA fighter. Knowing that he had f**king ended Tommy Morrison’s career. Ray Mercer (Cage Fury Fighting Championships V, 2009) He ended up with a concussion and in the hospital.” 3. Gannon was really f**ked up from that fight. That probably went on for about 15 minutes. He couldn’t throw punches any more so he started throwing elbows. Then the f**king guy started throwing knees. It was a controversial fight. I jammed my hand into his knuckles to break his hand. Then he started throwing elbows because he couldn’t throw punches anymore. Then we get into the fight and the f**king guy has me in a guillotine for a minute and a half with no ref or anyone there to break it up. We had agreed going into the fight on the rules. “The Sean Gannon fight was f**king controversial. If that fight would have went the other way, f**k it, they were robbing everybody. I took his eye out in that fight. Everybody put their money out on the table. We were coming out of there with that money. That’s why we had our guns. Everybody had their guns. ‘Big D’ (Florida backyard, 2003)įor the first fight in his list, Kimbo Slice, aka Kevin Ferguson, remembers the street fight that earned him his moniker: “That one was very personal. In an FO exclusive, Kimbo discusses some of his most legendary battles from the street and the cage. Today he’s one of Bellator’s biggest MMA stars, but everyone still remembers Kevin ‘Kimbo Slice’ Ferguson’s infamous street-fighting days. ![]()
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