The combat sport’s world lost one of its definitive marvels on June 6, Bellator MMA star Kimbo Slice; real name Kevin Ferguson, passed away aged 42.
He was taken to hospital on Monday after reportedly suffering a heart attack at his home in Coral Springs, Florida. Slice was scheduled to be in London, England on Thursday for Bellator’s next round of promotion ahead of their July 16, Bellator 158 card at the O2 Arena.
Kimbo’s headline position on the debut Bellator UK show was the promotion’s marketing tactic to give their inaugural show a greater feeling of grandeur. A larger than life persona, Slice was one of the most well-known fighters in the world and he featured in two of the sport’s most viewed telecasts.
His fight against James Thompson; who Slice was set to meet again next month in London, garnered a peak audience of 6.5 million viewers in May, 2008. His 2015 match-up with fellow street fighter Dada 5000 was watched by almost two million viewers on Spike TV. In a sport which truly lacks many great draws, Slice proved it wasn’t just about technical ability when pulling in a crowd.
“MMA history should remember Kimbo as having had a massive impact on raising the profile of MMA on a global scale and someone that achieved a modern version of the ‘American dream’,” MMA PLUS’s Anoop Hothi remembered.
However, Slice’s climb as one of MMA’s most popular figures began years before he officially stepped into a cage. In 2003, Slice became renowned for his badass, bare knuckle fights on the streets of Miami.
At the time of his rise to fame, social media was nowhere near as popular or as relevant as it is today. The first truly viral social media platform known as Myspace had just begun its ascent as the social powerhouse of the internet. Its bastard love-children Facebook and Twitter had yet to be created. Conversely, MMA had yet to peak in the United States and despite stars such as Chuck Liddell, Tito Ortiz and Randy Couture, the UFC had only just begun it’s meteoric rise under the ownership of Zuffa.
After earning the nickname Slice in his first known recorded street fight against opponent Big D, he quickly became the phenomena on the tip of everyone’s tongue. If you didn’t know who Slice was post-2003, then you must have been living under a rock, or one of his unconscious rivals.
As more of Slice’s Miami street fights appeared online his notoriety grew, enthralling even the most narrow minded of sports fans. You won’t be able to find many of Slice’s fights on the current version of YouTube, but at his peak the Bahamian born brawler was being watched online by millions of viewers. Once stricken by poverty, Slice was becoming one of the most sought after viral celebrities on the planet.
It was pandemonium, Kimbo Slice had become an overnight superstar and he’d done it; inadvertently, through the porn industry. SublimeDirectory was one of the world’s biggest distributors of adult films at the time but because of its nature had a huge underground following.
We were in a new age, the internet’s growing popularity had changed how we digested content especially with the growing acclaim for video services such as YouTube. A man like Slice; who at the time was simply a nightclub bouncer, had been gifted the opportunity to show the world his brutal magnificence because of the internet revolution.
MMA PLUS Editor Roberto Reid remembered Slice, saying: “Kimbo Slice’s impact on the sport of mixed martial arts can not be denied. Some detractors will of course try to claim otherwise but the notoriety the former internet sensation earned during his days as the King of the streets before making the jump to mixed martial arts without question aided the growth of the sport across the globe.”
In today’s landscape, the magnetism of a man like Slice is often taken for granted. MMA is now inherently different than when Kimbo first burst onto the professional scene in 2007. Physically imposing Heavyweights were lacking at the time Kimbo made the jump to MMA and it was partly the reason why he was given immediate opportunities with EliteXC and later, the UFC.
There’s no denying, Kimbo could be defined as a circus act, but what he lacked in skill he certainly made up for in heart. His peers and family knew him as a friendly giant, further defined through the beautiful interactions with his youngest son Kevlar who suffers with autism. But to the viewing world, he was a man of humble beginnings who had scratched and clawed his way from being a MILF Hunter security guard, to an instantly recognisable and irrefutable superstar.
Slice had his flaws, most recently testing positive for nandrolone and having an elevated (T/E) ratio for his fight with Dada 5000. He wasn’t perfect, but I think that’s what made him so appealing. Ferguson defied every obstacle imaginable to become a pillar of MMA history. His backstory, his technical ability, his age, everything was against Slice becoming a success.
But that’s the magic of it, although he never won any major accolades or championships, his biggest accomplishment of all was the part he played in the fruitful growth of our beloved sport. At a time when MMA was struggling to gain universal acclaim, Ferguson helped elevate the sport into the public eye. Quite simply, Kimbo Slice may never have been the icon MMA wanted, but his breaking down of barriers remains critically important for its success to this very day.
