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9. Backyard Façade Crumbles
EliteXC “Heat”
Oct. 4, 2008 | Sunrise, Fla.
It may be hard to remember now, but back in October 2008, Kevin Ferguson, aka “Kimbo Slice,” was a big deal. The former bodyguard-driver for a pornography company had become famous for bareknuckle backyard brawl fight videos distributed over the Internet and, in so doing, had become far more famous than the vast majority of professional, credentialed mixed martial artists.

The EliteXC organization picked up on that undercurrent of stardom, putting Ferguson in fights with the unheralded Bo Cantrell and veteran brawler David Abbott, both of which aired on Showtime. Ferguson’s third outing, however, was the real deal: a headlining spot opposite English heavyweight James Thompson on the first MMA card in history to air on a major television network. Thompson beat up Ferguson for most of the first two rounds, but in the third, a punch blew open the Brit’s cauliflower ear, and the referee stopped the fight.

That show did fantastic ratings, pulling an average of nearly five million viewers. EliteXC did another show on CBS, which did fairly well, but the next big step involved booking Ferguson against another fighter with some name value: UFC hall of famer Ken Shamrock. The veteran Shamrock was forced out of the fight the day of the event, and the promotion scrambled for a replacement. Ferguson agreed to fight the relatively unknown Seth Petruzelli, a onetime karate champion who was 8-4 and 0-2 in a pair of outings under the UFC banner.

Ferguson was a 4-to-1 favorite, but it took Petruzelli only 14 seconds to knock down the brawler with a grazing right hook and finish him with ground strikes. The odyssey of “Kimbo Slice” on network television was over, and that effectively sank EliteXC as a promotion, as well.

Number 8 » Breaking Ground