Kimbo Slice and his legacy
Kimbo Slice was a mixed martial arts phenomenon, he achieved a level of popularity that many other fighters will struggle to gain in their entire lifetime. That being said, Kimbo Slice was nowhere near the greatest mixed martial artist of his generation, he was a bareknuckle boxer with powerful blows but not much ground game. He was rather large and struggled with conditioning but was always an entertaining card whether it be Seth Petruzelli or Houston Alexander. However, people seemed to forget about where Kimbo has come from and what he has done for fellow Floridian street fighters.
To understand Kimbo, you have to understand where has come from and the struggles that he faced in his life. Kimbo was a street fighter from childhood and often held backyard fights in his home of Perrine, Florida for other men in the neighbourhood who were in poor-paying jobs. The appeal of backyard fighting is not always clear but it seems to stem from the money that could be earned by fighting and all the respect from being the baddest man on the block.
The Floridian came from this background and through the medium of Youtube managed to build himself a loyal fanbase who watched him fight people in his backyard. Kimbo was a very rudimentary mixed martial artist due to the fact he heavily relied upon his bare knuckle boxing and his wrestling was a last resort but it brought a whole new set of fans to the sport. This sentence seems like a falsehood when we consider the great MMA fighters of the past such as BJ Penn, GSP or Chuck Liddell. However, the UFC was in a lull during the period in which Kimbo became huge, Tito Ortiz was the only true megastar for the company and he was feuding with the ‘Bald One’.
Kimbo’s legacy is not the fact he was a great fighter because he wasn’t technically brilliant but he made the sport incredibly popular. Kimbo gassed out like anything in alll of his fights but he managed to single handledly keep EliteXC alive and remained a draw until his last fight with Dada5000 in Dallas under the Bellator banner. Kimbo also brought a degree of change to an economically depressed region of Florida.
When normal people think of Florida, we think about the glitzy Miami or Orlando being the Disney Town. We do not think about places such as Perrine, Florida which have been hurt by Hurricanes in the past and the 2007/8 recession which meant many of these people were laid off from their jobs. Kimbo did not put the fights on but his backyard fights that were broadcast through Youtube gave a business model for his last opponent Dada5000.
Dada5000 whose real name is Dhafir Harris was a childhood friend and training partner of Kimbo. He became big in the underground backyard fighting game due to his punching power and mental toughness. Dada then used this notoriety to set up the Extreme Backyard Fighting Championship in 2008 in the height of the economic downturn. The fights that Dhafir put on were well-organised and it brought a sense of pride to a community that was suffering from the effects of the depression. It also gave the fighters a sense of purpose, fighters such as Mike Trujillo who was going through a difficult time personally before turning his backyard experience into an MMA career.
Dada5000’s actions in the Miami-Dade County area were documented in ‘Dawg Fight’, a documentary that premiered on Netflix in the last few years. It is definitely worth watching as it provides a deeper insight into the hardship that is faced by a community in South-West Florida that is often ignored. There are fighters such as Tree who need the backyard to make money and avoid any trouble on the streets, he seemed to making a good attempt to build a career in combat sports. However, like many African-American men from depressed community, he was Tasered by the police and the effects of this meant he passed away three years ago.
The cherry on the Kimbo cake is Jorge Masvidal. Jorge Masvidal is a feared and extremely talented welterweight fighter who is at near the top of a very tough division. The welterweight division has a murderer’s row of fighters in the form of Tyron Woodley, Rafael Dos Anjos, Steven Thompson and Robbie Lawler. Jorge Masvidal could easily be the number one contender in this division and Kimbo Slice had a hand in the development of this famous Cuban-American fighter.
Jorge Masvidal has been around on the fight scene but like many pro fighters in Florida, there was not much to go around in regional level promotions. Masvidal used to street fight in order to supplement his income and provide enough money to live on so that he could continue to train in mixed martial artist. Through the South Florida underground fight scene, Jorge Masvidal met Kimbo Slice.
The story goes that Jorge Masvidal ended up fighting one of Kimbo’s proteges, Ray and won the fight against the much bigger and nastier man. Kimbo was naturally impressed and from then on, the two fighters from Florida seemed to look out for each other in the gym and elsewhere. KImbo’s notoriety and fame as a fighter meant that someone like Jorge Masvidal had a platform to perform on and grow his own popularity.
If a reader of this article looks on Youtube right now, backyard fights involving ‘Gamebred’ can be found and an important factor in that scene, the person who set up the fights, Kimbo Slice was present. Kimbo Slice and his desire to promote and grow backyard fighting has meant that a fighter like Masvidal got the fighting experience and money to continue training and grow as a mixed martial artist.
That is the legacy of Kimbo Slice, not the man as a fighter but the man who improved the community. He gave fighters such as Dada5000 a model to run with it in order to provide some form of relief to economically depressed regions of Miami-Dade County. It also meant that fighters such as Jorge Masvidal had a platform to grow themselves skill wise and launch an MMA career out of street fighting.
