Elite XC Heat - Kimbo Vs Shamrock

On October 4th, EliteXC returns to CBS with a card featuring none other than Youtube brawler Kimbo Slice versus UFC pioneer Ken Shamrock.

To find out the background information on Elite XC Heat look at our previous article here.

Billed as the biggest mixed martial arts event ever to hit Florida, will this fight live up to the hype being spouted by its headliners?

A Long and Troubled History

Kimbo Slice versus Ken Shamrock is a fight that EliteXC has been trying to set up for a while now. Unfortunately for them, reality kept messing things up.

Ken Shamrock, fresh off his release from the UFC after back to back losses to Tito Ortiz, was brought into the EliteXC family with loving arms and given a softball warm-up fight against an unknown journeyman fighter named Robert ‘Buzz’ Berry.

Unfortunately, Ken lost. And in embarrassing fashion to boot.

After much deliberation, EliteXC decided that they couldn’t effectively sell Kimbo Slice against Ken Shamrock after Ken’s performance, so they replaced Ken with the much more economically reasonable James Thompson and that was Slice’s opponent for EliteXC’s first CBS show on May 31st.

That resulted in a hard fought win for Slice - hard fought enough in fact that once again Ken Shamrock became a reasonable option as Kimbo’s next opponent.

And that’s how this fight came about … not quite the fairy tale story you might expect from the headlining bout in a major CBS sporting event, but there it is.

A Battle of Achilles’ Heels

The strengths and weaknesses of these two fighters are quite plain: Kimbo Slice hits like a ton of bricks, and Ken Shamrock is adept at submissions.

Kimbo Slice is still new to the sport and therefore bad at defending submissions, while Ken Shamrock has been hit so many times over 15 years that a light breeze has the potential to render him unconscious.

As for how to predict who will win the fight, you have to ask yourself - who will be able to impose their will on the other?

One strike against Ken Shamrock is that the fight starts on the feet, which is Kimbo’s realm. Another is that Kimbo is a true heavyweight fighter while Ken spent a good deal of his career fighting one class down at light heavyweight.

Getting the fight to the ground will take size and strength - again, something Kimbo will have an advantage in.

The Final Word

While I maintain a small glimmer of hope that David will find a way to beat Goliath, the pessimist in me (or realist, as he likes to be called) sees this fight ending early in the first, with Kimbo Slice earning another knockout for his slowly growing record.

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