It was about a year ago that Kimbo Slice was getting a beat down on national television, and subsequently ruining any chance of success for Elite XC on CBS. Since then, he's been basically invisible....well up until now. In an attempt to get into the UFC, Kimbo is going on Spike TV's Ultimate Fighter, which begins taping tomorrow....

[Dana] White has called him a “joke,” a “bum” and “not a real fighter,” among other less than kind descriptions. He said that Slice would “get murdered if he fought in the UFC” and suggested that his lightweight champion, 155-pound B.J. Penn, would “annihilate” the 230-pound Slice.

The UFC president has repeatedly insisted he would not allow Slice to compete in the UFC unless he won his way onto the show by competing on “The Ultimate Fighter,” which beings taping Wednesday and is scheduled to air in September.

Slice has called White’s bluff and will appear on Season 10 of the highly rated Spike TV series, White has confirmed. Fighters live in the same house and train together, and then fight during the show in a bid to earn a UFC contract.

His appearance, along with that of former UFC light heavyweight champions Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Rashad Evans as coaches, should guarantee massive ratings.

“It should be interesting, given some of the things I’ve said about him,” White said.

As White iterated, I think the idea of him going on the show will be nothing more than "interesting". After watching Kimbo getting knocked out by Seth Petruzelli in about 10 seconds, it's pretty obvious he's going to get destroyed by stronger competition.

Y! Sports exclusive: Kimbo gets TUF (Yahoo)

I took in most of the UFC card last night, and while I won't pretend to know much about the sport, I can say that I'm definitely going to watch Jackson-Evans. And why is that? Because of this bit of trash talking following UFC 96 last night (NSFW language)....

I think Dana White officially has his tagline for the fight. Too funny.

This past Summer, E:60 got some attention for railroading Miguel Tejada about his real age, and the Astro walked off set. Well yesterday the show featured an interview with UFC fighter and ex-Pro Wrestler, Brock Lesner, and he also decided to end things early. The show did an entire piece on the guy and then during the one-on-one portion, ESPN correspondent Tom Farrey decides to delve into steroid talk. Watch what goes down at around the :20 mark....

I still think E:60 is a bit cheesy, but they are definitely throwing out some interesting stories as of late. The problem with the Tejada interview was that it was a complete setup. Lesnar on the other hand should have at least been expecting this line of questioning, and to walk out when he could have just said he'd never tested positive is a bit sketchy.

Brock Lesnar Storms Out of ESPN Interview When Subject Turns to Steroids (Fanhouse)

So Craig Sager was trying to pass along the story of Nuggets' Coach George Karl making a video with Game One mistakes spliced with some other highlights. He referred to someone by the name of Kimbo Coles and streetfighting, and it left Marv Albert and Reggie Miller very confused. Craig came back on to clarify, but Marv was still lost.....

I'm so confused right now. Damn you Craig Sager.....now it's not just your loud ass suits but your anecdotes as well!!! Why in the hell would you be thinking about Bimbo Coles in the first damn place? While Vernell was a great player he played for neither the Nuggets or the Lakers in his career.

Also, I'm also pretty sure if I had to choose between Bimbo or Kimbo after me I'd choose Coles. Call me crazy.

The last great hurdle for UFC was to get some larger sponsors on board in an effort to achieve the credibility that they've been so desperately looking for to compete with Boxing. Well that big sponsor has been signed and it should be very familiar to Boxing fans.....Budweiser. Here are the details via Sports Biz....

In January, UFC signed Harley Davidson Harley-Davidson Inc to put its name in the Octagon and today, UFC announced a deal with Anheuser Busch, as Bud Light will become the new exclusive sponsor for the UFC. The brand will be featured on the Octagon center mat and on the vertical bumpers beginning with UFC 84 in Las Vegas on May 24.

Now that is huge. First of all, they are the biggest advertiser in sports, spending 80 percent of their total national TV spending dollars ($141 million of $171 million) on sports from January to Sept. 2007, according to Nielsen. And some go as far as to call them the greatest advertiser in all of sports.

That is huge, especially as Rovell notes the only other big sponsors they had have gone out of business. I still haven't personally gotten in to the Sport, but many have and this can only help them in the long run.

This Bud (Weiser) Is For UFC--Wise Move? (CNBC: Sports Biz)

(OMDQ is practicing writing about things he doesn't know a lot about)

There was a lot of talk in the days and weeks leading up to tonight's Chuck Liddell-Quinton Jackson title fight about the perceived competition between mixed martial arts and boxing, with most commenters seemingly of the opinion that the latter was practically dead and the former would soon take its place.

If by "take its place," they meant "showcase their biggest stars in pay-per-view events that are overpriced and almost always fail to deliver any excitement whatsoever," well, then MMA is on its way.

A few more thoughts and the fight video (thanks to Larry Brown Sports for leaving a trail of breadcumbs to the vid) after the jump.


I didn't watch the fight live (you'd have to threaten some pretty serious torture to get me to order a PPV of anything these days) but figured out pretty quickly from the live-blog at The FanHouse that things might not have gone as planned for Liddell and the UFC powers that be. You know it's bad when you can reprint a live-blog in its entirety:

Round 1: The fight has begun. Liddell is cautious early and in the first minute neither man has done anything significant. Jackson lands a big right hand. Liddell goes down. IT'S OVER!! LIDDELL IS KNOCKED OUT!

(On a side note, I need to say that this fight might have given me an irrational hatred of Michael David Smith - a very good writer - simply because he had the good fortune to do the live-blog. The only sports I ever live-blog - football and basketball - don't generally end early via knockout, unless Ron Artest is involved. I'm unbelievably jealous.)

These things happen, of course. But I fail to see how anyone who shelled out their hard earned dollars for this event could possibly come away satisfied. It lasted less than two minutes! That was it! And you could read about and watch it on the Internet right after it happened (although the "watch it" part probably won't last long on YouTube)! And the one guy most casual fans have heard of got his ass kicked! Why am I using so many exclamation points!?

Anyway, here's the video. (Thanks again to Larry Brown Sports for showing me that it existed.) Not really sure what strategy Liddell was using here, unless "get punched in the face and fall down" is in the playbook. Enjoy it while you can.

(posted by OMDQ)

Before he was a big star in UFC, Chuck Liddell did a little high school acting. If the YouTube user who posted this is on the level (and if you can't trust YouTube, who can you trust?), the role of the villain in this video is played by Liddell himself. Fine work, Chuck, fine work.