TUF Recap: Kimbo Slice Fights Next Week

Season Ten of The Ultimate Fighter continues to provide some good television for fans of mixed martial arts. The show continues to build up the rivalry between Rampage and Rashad, has tested the idea that football players will take over the heavyweight division, and will soon test Kimbo Slice against a true mixed martial artist, Roy Nelson.

Rampage and Rashad really don’t like each other. Their confrontations haven’t really boiled over, but Rampage clearly seems frustrated by Rashad. That’s part of the reason that I truly believe Rampage will return to the UFC. He wants to fight Rashad Evans.

But if anything, Rampage’s apparent retirement does suggest that Rampage’s team probably didn’t do very well on the show. If Rampage’s team was still alive, I don’t believe that Rampage would leave them coach-less going into the finale. Without having any knowledge of the results, I’ll make a guess now that both finalists are from team Rashad.

So far as we know though, Rampage’s team is already off to a bad start. The fight between James McSweeney and Wes Shivers was pretty close, but in the end, McSweeney moves on and Shivers is eliminated.

McSweeney is a fighter with a lot of muay thai experience. Despite that experience, he initially appeared confused and lost against the much larger Shivers.

My initial reaction to the fight was that McSweeney looked a lot like Keith Jardine in that he seemed somewhat awkward in his style, and disengaged frequently. He even turned away from Shivers to run away in the opposite direction, much like Jardine has done in the past.

I hope that he manages to lose some of these habits, as they will not help him inside the Octagon. I really do wonder though, if he picked up those habits from Jardine, as they both do train at Greg Jackson’s in New Mexico.

Despite my criticisms, I can’t completely blame McSweeney’s technique for some of the awkwardness of the fight. McSweeney is a very tall fighter at six feet, four inches. Despite his own height, he was dwarfed by the six foot, seven inch Shivers. McSweeney cannot be accustomed to fighting such tall fighters, which no doubt made him somewhat uncomfortable.

Given more time to prepare against taller fighters, I imagine he would do somewhat better. Furthermore, he won’t have so many tall obstacles in the UFC. Most of the heavyweights are shorter than him.

In losing, Shivers showed to the world that being an NFL caliber athlete does not guarantee success in the Octagon. It just makes success a lot more likely. Shivers’ size and athleticism will be difficult to deal with for a lot of fighters. Since Shivers wasn’t even a top NFL player, and at 32, is past his NFL prime, I think it is safe to say that NFL players with a few years of MMA training could certainly pose problems for current top-level fighters in the heavyweight division.

There is currently more money available for top heavyweight athletes to compete in the NFL, but the money gap between the UFC and the NFL is slowly closing, so it will be interesting when NFL prospects actually move to mixed martial arts in the prime of their careers instead of near the end of their careers like Shivers and Marcus Jones.

Thankfully though, not everything is going to require that long of a wait. The UFC finally did us all a favor by announcing that the fight between Kimbo Slice and Roy Nelson will be aired next week on the next episode of The Ultimate Fighter. It’s a good move for the UFC, as it will guarantee one more week of great ratings, and will ease the frustration that comes from waiting for a possible Kimbo fight.

This is pretty much the best fight that the UFC could have hoped for. Kimbo Slice is the most famous of the contestants, but Roy Nelson is probably the fighter with the most fighting credentials, and is probably the second-most famous.

Roy Nelson is a big test for Kimbo Slice, as Nelson has great grappling skills, and some decent striking ability as well. In order for Kimbo to win he will need to keep the fight standing. Any length of time spent on the ground will be very dangerous for Kimbo. That being said, Kimbo might just be the better striker of the two.

Both fighters come into this fight with a lot to prove. Kimbo wants to prove that he is a true fighter, while Nelson is trying to prove that as well.

Nelson is a true mixed martial artist with a very respectable 13-4 record. A win for Kimbo would be a big accomplishment, and would legitimize him as an MMA fighter.

Nelson believes that he would have been in the UFC long ago if he had a more marketable look. He thinks that his gut got in the way. Instead of losing the extra weight as some commentators have suggested, he’s been fighting for years outside of the UFC, and has fought pretty good fights against top fighters like Ben Rothwell, Jeff Monson, and Andrei Arlovski. The Jeff Monson decision was a controversial one, and he was stood up from a dominant position on the ground against Arlovski before he was eventually knocked out.

Now though, Nelson is putting everything on the line by joining TUF. If he loses to Kimbo, he’ll have suffered the most public loss of his career. If he wins, he’ll enter the UFC with some real momentum.

Tags: Andrei Arlovski, Keith Jardine, Rashad Evans, UFC