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MIAMI - CBS-TV lends the fraud-sport grandly calling itself Mixed Martial Arts the false imprimatur of legitimacy by this week inaugurating a new prime-time series, EliteXC Saturday Night Fights - with Miami’s own inexplicably popular Kimbo Slice the first headlining act.

Pardon my not swelling with civic pride over one of our own hitting the big-time at last for what amounts to legalized criminality, a plain barbarism that would tend to discourage a pedestal for this man.

Would-be hero Kevin Ferguson (Kimbo’s real name) says he dreams of tearing off a man’s arm and beating him with it.

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Kimbo Slice, a one-time homeless man, one-time strip club bouncer, one-time backyard, back-alley brawler turned Internet sensation/big money mixed martial artist isn’t a problem. Only in America, right?

He’s said to be a great guy, a boot-strap success story who deserves everything coming to him. I’ve watched him maul “Adryan” a half dozen times alone. You have, or will, too.

Kimbo Slice being a street fighter, rather than a Brazilian jiu-jitsu or Muay Thai master, isn’t a problem either.

No, he isn’t the best and brightest in MMA. He’d probably get whipped in a second by the sport’s elite, as Tito Ortiz predicted. The beauty of the MMA, though, is you bring what you’ve got to the cage. Kimbo has those iron fists. Maybe it’s enough. Maybe it isn’t. We’d all like to find out. The day an old-school scrapper doesn’t have a place here will be a sad one.

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STUDIO CITY, Calif. - For those of a certain age, those who can still recall the ancient analogue ways, the image seems incongruent: Kimbo Slice, a gold-toothed former bodyguard for street pornographers, appearing at an interview podium with Bill Paley's seal of approval. 
That CBS eye remains the Tiffany network's imprimatur, still regarded in many quarters as the gold standard in network programming. But the world has changed. Unique users have replaced Nielsen points as a barometer of relevance. And you can only give people — particularly males between the ages of 18 and 34 — so many repeats of "CSI" and "NCIS" and "Criminal Minds" on Saturday nights. Enter Kimbo Slice, who will appear this weekend as the featured fighter in mixed martial arts' debut on network prime time, "EliteXC Saturday Night Fights."    His given name is Kevin Ferguson, once a football player of modest renown at Miami-Palmetto High School. In the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, Ferguson entered the ranks of the homeless. Down to little more than his natural skill set — "been fighting since I was 13," he says — he found a way to make ends meets as a bouncer and a bodyguard. With the requisite aura of menace, he served as an escort for the aforementioned producers whose videos sought to bring an illusion of prurient realism (ie. desperately hot mommies) to the masses. But his big break came as a street fighter, having administered spectacularly brutal beatings in backyards, alleys and garages.

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ORIGINAL: Level
 but I'm kind of surprised CBS is putting this in prime time.

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ORIGINAL: petdave

i was wondering what a Kimbo Slice was... thought it was one of those Japanese game shows they're bringing over. Ah well. 

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The main event showcased two mediocre fighters in mediocre condition....
...Have no doubt about this: Slice would be destroyed by any legitimate mixed martial artist. Had Slice faced ex-WWE champion Brock Lesnar, the current UFC rookie hopeful, he’d have been beaten in less than two minutes.
As it was, Slice struggled his way to a sloppy third-round knockout of a complete tomato can.
You can’t blame Slice, because he had no business being in a main event of a mixed martial arts bout at this stage of his progression. It takes years of training and sacrifice to reach the main event in MMA and Slice was only there because of the notoriety he’d gained in his YouTube street brawls.

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ORIGINAL: Level

Yeah, Slice won, but he got beat on.....the best part of the card was Gina Carano http://www.hitsusa.com/1-good-ones/gina-carano-fists.jpg

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ORIGINAL: SilentTigresss

I watched all the fights last night on TV. The two women, and Kimbo's fight had me on the edge of my couch. Fantastic fights. I, um...... should I confess (?).. found myself excited from watching.

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I watched all the fights last night on TV. The two women, and Kimbo's fight had me on the edge of my couch. Fantastic fights. I, um...... should I confess (?).. found myself excited from watching.

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ORIGINAL: Level

Yeah, or MTV-Z, or something. [&:] I miss turning it on at 11 AM and seeing Ice Cube, or Dire Straits.