Last night was being hyped as one of the most important nights in MMA history as EliteXC became the first MMA organization to be shown on network television. Leading up to the card a majority of the hype was built around the street fighting internet “phenom” Kimbo Slice and his match against James Thompson. In my mind I think more hype should have been put into Robbie Lawler and his title match against Scott Smith or Gina Carano against Kaitlyn Young but they put the emphasis on what sells and Kimbo sells.
I tuned in about an hour late as I was watching the Phillies game (god damn Marlins). I turned on just in time for the start of the female match with Carano against Young. Both look in great shape and prepared and Carano is a cutie that packs a punch. She came out quick with lots of front kicks to Young who was on the defense most of the match but did get some good punches and a couple high kicks in. But Gina was just to much and the match was halted by doctors after the second round. Carano is in my opinion like the Danica Patrick of MMA. She is a great looking girl that is also very good at what she does. She admits she didn’t get as much training as she would have liked because of American Gladiator tapings (her name is Crush on the show). I would love to see her with full preparation. But not to take anything away from Kaitlyn Young who was very impressive as well.
Next was Kimbo hype but if there is one thing I like about Kimbo is he doesn’t seem like he wants to hype himself. He is very quite and soft spoken and just wants his actions to speak for him. He pretty much just said he was prepared and wanted to fight. He also threw a shout out to Gina.
Up next was the EliteXC Middleweight Championship fight as the champion Robbie Lawler took on Scott Smith. They built up both as heavy hitters with Smith being seen more as “I”m going in there and going to try to knock him out fast” type of guy while Lawler was being built up as the calculating predator and waiting for his strikes. The match started off a little slow with both men seemingly sizing each other up but once they got going Lawler showed every reason why he is the champ. He waited and counter attacked almost every Smith attempt. He gave great body kicks that were visibly hurting and staggering Smith. Smith seemed lucky to survive the first round and the commentators and probably the fans were just wondering how quick would it take for Lawler to finish Smith off. But Smith came out in round two a completely different fighter. He started going on the offensive and hit Lawler with a pretty good high kick that wobbled the champ. After round two I would say it was one round to each fighter. In the third round both men came out swinging and you knew they were both going for the knockout until Lawler accidentally poked Smith in the eye. Right away you saw Lawler say he hit him in the eye and apologize. Now rules state that a fighter who is poked in the eye has up to five minutes of recovery time. Maybe two and a half or three minutes into the time the doctor says the fight is over. Smith surprisingly begged for the fight not to end this way. Lawler at the same time looked very upset as he did not want it to go this way. The athletic commissioner gave a statement saying that Smith on two occasions said he could not see so they called the fight. While I agree in looking out for the well being of the fighter they did not at all allow Smith his full five minutes. And by rule a title match must go at least three full rounds to go to the judges score cards. So since it only went about two and a half it was ruled a no contest. It was a shame the match ended this way and you could tell both fighters and the fans were upset by it as well. Loud “bullshit” chants rung out through the arena. Lawler was censored for saying some non network friendly words as well. But EliteXC president Gary Shaw showed some class by announcing that they would schedule a rematch as soon as possible and that he would be paying both fighters their winning bonuses.
Next up and rounding out the night was the “Main Event” between Kimbo Slice and James Thompson. I was noticing around this time that it was well after 11:00 pm EST, the time the show was suppose to be over at. There were long, obnoxious hype videos and even longer and more obnoxious introductions, how many fucking nicknames do you have to give a guy before the announcer just says his damn name?
Now I have seen Thompson in action before. He is known to the Japanese fans as Gong and Dash. When Thompson fought in Pride he would very typically start his fights right at the opening bell running across the ring (or cage) in a flurry. My first experience of seeing Thompson, a 12 second match with him being knocked out by Aleksander Emelianenko, the brother of possibly the best heavyweight fighter in the world Fedor. One thing Thompson in notorious for is having a possible weak jaw. He usually wins big or loses even bigger but he does have wins in his career over Dan Severn, Don Frye and Hidehiko Yoshida, all world class fighters. I think it was with good reason Thompson was chosen as the opponent for Kimbo. He has some skill, more than Kimbo’s previous opponents, but has proven he can get knocked out rather easily.
Now right as the fight was about to begin you couldn’t help but notice the extremely large cauliflowered left ear of Thompson. I have seen plenty of cauliflower ears on fighters before but this was like a golf ball on his ear. Why did he not have this drained before the fight? Anyone think it may have anything to do with the EliteXC wanting Kimbo to burst that thing open? I’ll leave that to you to speculate but there were plenty of fishy things about this fight which I will be getting to.
Round one starts and luckily we don’t see the typical Gong and Dash from Thompson. They stay on their feet for a little bit until Thompson very easily takes Kimbo to the ground, so very early on we get to see what type of ground game Kimbo has. Kimbo was very mediocre at best on the ground. He did get an escape and tried a guillotine choke but really just didn’t know what to do.
Round two was when things really started to make the match look fixed. Thompson dominated this round. Thompson had Kimbo in a guillotine of his own at one point where it clearly looked like Kimbo tapped out but the match went on and Kimbo escaped. Thompson took Kimbo down with ease and on a few occasions pinned both of Kimbo’s arms to the ground and rained down elbows to Kimbo’s face, many of which were completely unblocked. During one of these flurries I could clearly hear the referee tell the fighters to get busy or he was going to stand them up. How could he say that? Thompson is just beating into Kimbo. If anything the fight should have been stopped with a win for Thompson because Kimbo was not defending himself at all. The round ended with Kimbo pretty much being saved by the bell.
Now one thing we didn’t know at the time but know now is that even after Thompson dominated the second round, with one judge even scoring the round 10-8 in favor of Thompson, there was still one judge that scored the round 10-9 in favor of Kimbo. I never knew you could win a round getting beaten up. You learn something new everyday.
Well the third round starts and by this point both fighters are winded badly. Both men are swinging wildly and as many thought, boom, Thompson’s ear is busted open. Blood is pouring down his face as they exchange blows. Thompson takes another uppercut and the ref decides that is it and steps in. Almost immediately Thompson pushes the ref furious that the fight was stopped. While Thompson may have ended up getting knocked out a few seconds later I think the match was prematurely stopped. Thompson was landing strikes as well as being hit at the same time. Kimbo collapsed to the mat in exhaustion and once again the crowd seemed very disappointed in the result. It was almost as if the fans turned on Kimbo through the fight.
At this point I was tired and didn’t want to see any post match bullshit so I went to bed. This was an extremely disappointing event for something that was suppose to be a big deal. There was way to much talk and hype videos, the introductions were painfully long and there were some very bizarre decisions made in a couple of the matches. My friend Lane has been hyping EliteXC for months to me after he had seen a show or two on Showtime but after seeing this event I was left with a bad taste in my mouth. Not at the fault of the fighters because they put their hearts into this but at EliteXC and CBS. While EliteXC has some very good fighters like Robbie Lawler, Scott Smith, Gina Carano and Nick Diaz (who did not fight at this event) they just do not have the quality of fighters as the UFC or WEC. And shame on CBS for buying into the EliteXC as portraying themselves as the big leagues when they really are no where close to the product provided the the aforementioned promotions. The Kimbo fight had no business being in the main event. The two matches previous to the main event were main event caliber matches but that was all they had to offer.
If CBS decides to continue showing EliteXC a lot is going to have to be done. EliteXC needs to either get better talent or showcase the talent they have already. Yes Tito Ortiz is out there and available and so is Fedor but their price tags are huge and Tito I believe is passed his prime and doesn’t even seem like he has the desire to fight anymore. And bring in Fedor would make a mockery of any of their heavyweight talent they currently have and show immediately that they lack the depth on their roster. EliteXC needs to showcase Lawler, Diaz, Smith, Carano and shit put Frank Shamrock back in the cage instead of the damn commentary box.
If you want to see great fighting I would recommend two amazing cards in July. First is the UFC event on July 5th as Rampage Jackson takes on Forrest Griffin and secondly is the Affliction show that will see Fedor take on Tim Sylvia and Josh Barnett take on Pedro Rizzo.
Well that’s it for my rant on the EliteXC network debut. I got asked to do a blog about Lost which I will do a little later on, maybe today or tomorrow.
