Kimbo Slice Added To The Cast For The Next Season Of The Ultimate Fighter
Monday night, I received a Google chat message from fellow F4WOnline/Wrestling Observermember Sinbad, who was very excited.
KIMBO SLICE IS ON ULTIMATE FIGHTER NEXT SEASON!
I think I started laughing.
I wasn’t laughing because it was a terrible idea, but I was laughing because I’d just been talking with a very casual MMA fan and one of the first questions he asked me was about Kimbo Slice. I’d showed him the Jose Canseco vs. Hong Man Choi fight and he immediately wondered if Kimbo Slice was ever going to fight again. There have been rumors that Slice would take up boxing and that he wasn’t interested in MMA anymore. That still may be true, but for a few months, he better be interested in MMA.
Kevin Iole wrote that it was originally supposed to be a heavyweight and middleweight show, but the middleweights were called and told that it was going to be an all heavyweight show. Former football player turned MMA fighter Rex Richards was one of the names that came up when we got word of the tryouts for this season.
When I told Cactus Jim, his first thought was that the show was jumping the shark and becoming something it wasn’t intended to be. I can agree with him on that end, but while the show is guaranteed to give you a few moments each season, the format is tired and we’ve seen nearly everything we’re going to see in a house full of fighters.
I think with Kimbo, the season will do the best ratings the show has done since season three, when Tito Ortiz and Ken Shamrock were coaches and sniped at each other nearly every episode.
We’ve already written about Rashad Evans and Rampage Jackson being named the coaches of the season. With Slice, it gets a bit more interesting because both guys could easily beat Slice, but it was Slice who was doing huge TV ratings numbers. I imagine both Evans and Jackson will antagonize Slice a bit.
Also, everyone remembers when Seth Petruzelli beat Kimbo, subbing for Ken Shamrock who busted his head open rolling right before the fight, seemingly because he was angry about his payday. Everyone in the house is going to want to be the next Petruzelli. Hell, what if Seth is on the show too?
We’ll hopefully hear some details soon and Dana White did promise there would be surprises. We know for sure there’s at least one.
Rampage Jackson posted this messsage in Twitter:
Just got done with a long first day on the job. I liked everybody but one!
I asked him if the person he didn’t like was Slice, but he didn’t reply. Rampage and I don’t roll like that. Yet.
Photo of Kimbo Slice by cotton_man and shared via creative commons.
A MILLION GAZILLION BUYS!~!!!!!!!