Ah, remember the days when Kimbo Slice was making people go bazonkers for his vicious beatdown videos on YouTube? Today, after washing out as a professional mixed martial artist, Slice's fighting career has reached a new low. Despite winning his fourth straight professional boxing match Saturday night, the sports Interwebs are buzzing with allegations that Slice's opponent, Brian Green, who was winning the bout, took a dive at the end of the fourth round.
According to ESPN's Chuck Mindenhall, Green "did what all fighter on the cusp of winning a fight with a high-profile novelty do -- he dropped his hands and made his chin open for business." Deadspin's Barry Petchesky called Slice's victory "the sort of travesty that may have helped kill Bert Sugar," the 74-year-old boxing writer who died yesterday of cardiac arrest. With that, let's go to the tape:
At the 4:01 mark, Slice connects a lazy uppercut that sends Green to the canvas in a performance that hasn't been seen since Dolph Lundgren's Ivan Drago did a ballet spin after getting knocked out by Sylvester Stallone's Rocky Balboa in Rocky IV. A few minutes later, while hovering over Green, the referee is sporting the kind of grin when someone knows they are in on a joke being played on everyone else. Before the video ends, the camera lens captures two fans shaking their heads in disgust.
But it shouldn't come as a surprise that Kimbo was involved in a fight with a questionable outcome. Let's not forget his infamous loss to then-little-known challenger Seth Petruzelli in 2008 that pretty much ended the EliteXC. Former New Times Broward-Palm Beach columnist Bob Norman reported how Petruzelli had received a $15,000 "knockout" bonus before the fight and that members of Kimbo's entourage had bet huge on his opponent, who was a 6-to-1 underdog.
Can't knock Slice and his people for gaming the system again and again.
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