Controversy -- a prolonged public dispute, debate, or contention; disputation concerning a matter of opinion.
Is there a better word to describe Elite XC's "Saturday Night Fights"?
Let's forget for a moment about the Scott Smith stoppage and the Kaitlin Young stoppage and let's focus for now on the Kimbo Slice stoppage of James Thompson.
First let me say this: What kind of success would Elite XC be expecting to have heading into the future if its "franchise" -- Kimbo Slice -- were to lose to a hand-picked opponent and get exposed as nothing more than a street fighter with no real MMA skills?
Probably not too much.
Everybody who knew anything about this fight going into tonight knew what each fighter's gameplan was going to be. Kimbo was going to try and come out and look for a knockout, and James Thompson was going to come out and look to test Kimbo's ground game with takedowns and ground and pound.
Let's review:
Round 1: Kimbo gets taken down and gets pounded on for the better part of the round.
Round 2: Kimbo gets taken down and gets pounded on (albeit with some marshmallows) for the better part of the round.
Advantage so far to James Thompson.
At this point in the fight he was executing his gameplan perfectly and had a fighter who had never been out of the first round completely confused and exhausted. All three judges, in fact, had James Thompson ahead through two rounds.
Round 3: Both fighters are dog tired, and Kimbo needs a knockout to win. At the first sign of trouble for James Thompson, the ref steps in and stops the fight. He wasn't knocked down, he wasn't knocked out, and after the fight was stopped, he wasn't the one laying on the floor.
I'm not going to say that Kimbo wasn't going to knock James Thompson out, because by the looks of things, he probably was well on his way to doing that. The thing that has me irked is that the ref stepped in and didn't let the fight play out.
If you don't think there was something rotting in Denmark then riddle me this. Gary Shaw, at the post fight press conference, told the media that James Thompson was taken to the hospital by ambulance immediately after the fight.
Cue entrance of "The Collusus."
Either someone is lying to the live events president or the live events president is lying. Or, it could be some really bad miscommunication. The kind of miscommunication, however, that gets someone fired. Fast.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the hell out of the fight. It was awesome seeing Kimbo get tested like that, and I do think he was going to eventually put Thompson down. But why not let it play out? And what's the deal with the shenanigans at the press conference afterwards?
Just too much controversy.
Whats next for Kimbo? He had trouble with James Thompson's size. Is he really going to fight Brett Rogers next? That seems like a horrible match up for him, and like I said earlier, what is Elite XC going to do if its star gets exposed?
Rogers ripped Kimbo's performance at the post fight press conference and it was obvious he wants that fight and thinks he can win it. He just kept dogging Kimbo and at one point Kimbo got so pissed off that the two had an altercation -- the two had to be separated!
Here's what Rogers said that finally put Kimbo over the edge:
"A man is man. And what I saw in this man today, it was just garbage. I’m going to speak it real, it was garbage. You did tap. You did tap out, I saw it, I was right there."
Rogers was referring to the second round when Kimbo was in deep trouble late in the round eating elbow after elbow. This is bad for Kimbo because now he almost has to take this fight, and, in this writer's opinion, I don't think he's going to win based on tonight's performance.
I do know this though, Gary Shaw is not a happy man. Sure, he has another fight he can sell now, but at what cost? If Kimbo loses, his company is in trouble.
Continuing with the controversy theme of this recap and this event ... what kind of stoppage was that in the title fight? I'm convinced if this was not on network television that it would have continued. CBS wanted no part of any of these fighters getting seriously hurt on its watch.
To be a fly on the wall of the prefight referee discussion.
It seemed like fights were getting called by the doctor in every other match. I've never typed the two words doctor and stoppage so many times in my life.
Scott Smith should have been given time to recover and then the fight should have continued. That stoppage ruined a great fight -- perhaps the best fight in the history of Elite XC. It was one for the ages.
Also, in the woman's match, Kaitlin Young was tired and had a beat up face, but she could have continued. The problem here, again, is more than likely that CBS doesn't want its viewers to watch people getting hurt, especially a woman.
Maybe in the end this event proved that MMA belongs on pay per view and premium cable and NOT network television.
These are fights and people get hurt in fights. If you're not willing to live with that, then don't put the sport on your channel. Over protecting fighters is not what fans of this sport want to see. These athletes know what they're getting themselves into, and they're highly trained.
Let them compete or don't get involved at all.
Kimbo had no gas left in the tank. Who's to say that he could have even kept throwing punches? Maybe Thompson would have landed one on Kimbo's chin and put the exhausted fighter out. Who knows. That's the point, we don't know because the fight was stopped before it could play out.
Much like the rest of the action all night long.
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