Zach Arnold has penned the quintessential “Fuck Kimbo” article:
Don’t get me wrong, Dana White made himself a no-lose business deal here. He got exactly what he wanted. However, to watch the upcoming charade that a lot of UFC water carriers in the media are going to parade is going to be completely nauseating to watch. Time after time, I’ve heard every excuse in the book as to why someone should be justified in associating with questionable figures. “It’s the fight business!”
So, be prepared over the next several months in dealing with Kimbo Slice hype and media writers who so desperately want to curry favor with UFC to make every lame, pathetic, intellectually lazy excuse in the book to try to come up with different justifications for Kimbo Slice and UFC working together as being ‘good for the sport.’ It’s good for UFC’s pocket books, but is it ‘good’ for the sport? Depends on what you mean by that.
However, the biggest carny act of them all is Kimbo. Despite reportedly getting paid a high-six figure salary to fight Seth Petruzelli, Kimbo Slice is still pulling his “I gotta feed my family” carnival act. In a Dana White YouTube video blog on Tuesday, Slice on camera kept saying how he wanted to prove that he could fight ‘the Mixed Martial Arts style’ and how he needed to work to feed his family.
The hilarious thing in watching Kimbo is how he continues to push this front and just how many fans continue to buy it. For all the disdain that a lot of MMA fans online have for professional wrestling fans, it sure seems the two audiences have a lot more in common than they really know.
It’s some interesting food for thought. Personally, I’m not going to try and agree or disagree with anyone on this because each person’s analysis of the situation is directly colored by their personal opinion of Kimbo Slice. Zach and many others clearly see him as a corrupting force in MMA that has already done damage to the sport’s integrity and will probably do more by the time he washes out of the fight business.
