Michael David Smith has some notes from today's TUF press call with Kimbo Slice:
"I'm a hard puncher trying to learn the ground game," Kimbo said. "You can do a lot, but you can't master anything in two years. In mixed martial arts, the more you roll the more you learn. It's something I'm working on."
American Top Team is known for its strenuous strength and conditioning program, which pushes its fighters through grueling workouts. Kimbo said he's in good cardiovascular shape and weighing about 230 pounds, and he said he'd be capable of dropping down to 205 pounds if the UFC asks him to become a light heavyweight.
"I'm a heavyweight," Kimbo said. "But if the promoters want me to come down, heck yeah I'd give it a try."
MMA Junkie focuses on a potential opponent for Kimbo at 205lbs -- Seth Petruzelli:
"If Seth signed with the UFC, and if Dana (White) and them want to match it up, damn right I'll run it again with him," Ferguson said. "We don't even need to do it in a ring. We can do it bare-knuckle style because I don't like liars. I've never turned down a rematch with anybody. Anyone I fought, I'll fight them again.
"It ain't personal. It's just the fact that it's bull [expletive]. No one ever said, 'Hey Kimbo, do you want to rematch Seth?' and I was like, 'No.' I've never said no to nothing. Not like that. Not to him."
Also don't miss the hype video for the Kimbo Slice vs Roy Nelson fight that will air on Wednesday.
And here's Roy Nelson talking to MMA Weekly about why Kimbo wasn't his first choice of opponent:
"Me and Kimbo, we talked about it, like how much money we would have potentially lost by fighting actually on the show," stated Nelson. "We could have headlined shows just by ourselves. So it's actually kind of funny to go that route, but I'm glad that we did it. I think it's probably going to be Spike's number one show by far than even the premier.
"I think it's going to be the fight of The Ultimate Fighter, and then it just gets better because after that you get to see the drama of what happens to me and Kimbo living in the same room together."
UPDATE: Jonathan Snowden gets Kimbo talking about how he got started in the fight game:
"The very first fight, when I got a couple hundred dollars-that was big," Slice said. "That's when I decided to do this for a living. This is another way. I could start robbing, start selling dope or some shit like that. I didn't want to do that. My old girl, my mother, she wasn't with that. I couldn't get caught stealing something from somebody's house. Not with a mother like mine. This was an opportunity. I could take my ass to work and do it the honest way...What we did was raw. There was no training. It was just straight war. I'm coming right into your back yard. I'm gonna knock a guy's ass out, leave his blood on the ground. And I'm dippin."
