But that’s perhaps because we did know what to expect when Kimbo Slice and Ken Shamrock, both of who had not competed in 5 years, were part of the featured fight at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri.
The focal event of the night produced, no doubt about that. But what exactly?
Shamrock was conscious of the fact that his best shot at defeating Slice would include taking advantage of Slice’s nonexistent experience in grappling (using skills to gain an advantage over an opponent without striking), and he did his best to exploit it. The 51-year-old went straight to Kimbo’s legs attempting a double-leg takedown with a persistent Shamrock eventually toppling the beast after continuous applied pressure. The ‘World’s Most Dangerous Man’ straightaway looked to benefit from it tumbling Kimbo in a yawning rear-naked choke (a common choke applied when an attacker secures the back of their opponent and uses it to set up a choke from the opponent’s blind spot). While it appeared as if a tap would be forthcoming, Shamrock just couldn’t maintain it eventually forced to let Kimbo go.
The tables were to turn. Kimbo was able to regain his footing, landing a hard uppercut while doing so, which seemed to stagger Shamrock. Slice would go on the offensive following up with a brutal string of right hands resulting in a damaging straight landing hard to Shamrock’s left dropping him like a bag of chips. As Slice moved in to seal the deal, referee waved the fight to end.
The fight lasted a total of 2:22 minutes.
For Shamrock fans, it is disappointing as his rear-naked choke looked impermeable to a point where it looked surprising, as Slice was able to get away. However, Shamrock should consider himself lucky that the fight was over before the ground-and-pound was initiated by Slice. Things could have gotten worse.
It is tough to call the future of both fighters as it will most likely crux around the ratings of Bellator 138 and any worthy adversaries. Slice, however, made his intentions clear that he is hear to stay, telling Luke Thomas of MMAFighting.com,
“I believe I’m here to stay. I’m still learning, back to training on Monday, and it’s not going to stop here.”
All signs leads towards Kimbo eventually having to fight Seth Petruzelli – the man who had knocked him down on his much hyped about debut. Being present at the Bellator 138, Petruzelli brought a momentary standstill to the former street fighter’s victory.
Though Petruzelli retired in 2013, he is now more resolute than ever in the idea of a rematch.
“I was saying let’s go Round 2 – let’s go two fights, man,” Petruzelli said. “Everybody says it’s a f…ing fluke, so let’s go again. I am sick of everyone telling me it was lucky. It wasn’t lucky. I will show everybody it wasn’t. That’s what pissed me off is that he calls me out, and now he doesn’t even want to acknowledge me.”
In a January interview with ‘the MMA Hour’, Kimbo had stated his intentions on fighting Petruzelli again.
“I owe that dude one,” Slice said. “The nature of it, I could complain all day long on this and that, but s..t, it just went down the way it went down, but goddamn I owe him one.”
Regardless of the verbal back and forth between them, which will not cease in the near future, the question remains to be answered whether we would eventually see them both take to the Decagon in the Bellator series this year.
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