Monday, June 2, 2008

Kimbo Slice fight = laughingstock

So I caught that EliteXC mixed martial arts fight CBS aired on Saturday night in prime-time.  What an utter embarrassment.  

I'm not sure what CBS was thinking really as they clearly don't have any clue how to run an MMA fight.  They know how to hype it, but that only works when the payoff is better than all the talk.  

The first few fights only lasted a minute each, but the show had logged about an hour and a half of airtime.  There was just too much time between fights, and that dead air just bores people... myself included.  The editing as a whole was awful.  At one point in an interview with Kimbo Slice, he wishes good luck to Gina Carano, a female MMA fighter.  Only she had been in the ring and out already.

The main event was the previously mentioned YouTube street-brawling sensation Kimbo Slice versus some ogre from England named James Thompson.  It was a joke.  Neither of them could last past the first round, and had just started hanging on each other like amateur heavyweight boxers, wildly flailing a punch here and there.  It was embarrassing.  Eventually the fight was called because Thompson's cauliflower ear had been popped open by one of Slice's punches.  I think it was for the best as nothing eventful was really happening anyway.

Also, for whatever reason CBS decided to give the commentary to March Madness play-by-play man, Gus Johnson.  While I like his basketball work, he just was out of his element in MMA.  Excessive use of hyperbole.  Getting unnecessarily excited.  He just was not comfortable doing an MMA bout and it showed.

CBS dropped the ball here.  I'd much rather pay for the Ultimate Fighting pay-per-views because at least in those I know I'm getting some quality man-on-man-punching-in-the-face-jiu-jitsu-mixed-martial-arts.  And that's what we like.

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