CBS and Pro Elite Conspire to Sacrifice Shamrock & Sport in Exchange for Ratings

Wherever one man endeavours to build something great, another labours to tear it down; some for spite, some for envy, some for plain, old-fashioned, short-sighted greed.

On Saturday October 4th CBS will air Pro Elite’s latest Mixed Martial Arts event, ‘Heat’.  Most viewers tuning in will be doing so to watch the fight card’s main event, Ken Shamrock vs Kevin Ferguson aka ‘Kimbo Slice’, a travesty of a bout that threatens to put a black eye on the sport of MMA for all involved while putting at risk the health of one of the sport’s respected legends.

Once an MMA great, today Ken Shamrock is a sacrificial lamb offered up by Pro Elite in order to draw higher ratings when it airs its otherwise solid fight card on CBS this Saturday.  It seems that the matchmakers of Pro Elite are willing to sacrifice the Hall of Fame warrior and the integrity of the sport in their desperation to justify their continued existence and maintain their good standing with CBS.

Less than a decade ago the sport of Mixed Martial Arts, banned from pay-per-view due to its exaggerated bare-knuckled, no-holds-barred reputation, languished relegated to the status of side show spectacle.  And as the sport suffered so too did the athletes.

When Zuffa and Dana White purchased the floundering UFC they invested time, money and energy in cleaning up MMA’s damaged image.  In their efforts to establish MMA as a legitimate sport, the UFC took the high road favouring evenly matched bouts between top tier athletes rather than the easy pay-days guaranteed by spectacles between loud-mouthed brawlers and celebrity-type toughs.

It was a gamble and in the short term they alienated many of the hardcore fans who had kept the sport alive through the dark days without pay-per-view, the kind of fans who disliked time limits, weight classes, referee stoppages and scoring systems. 

It was a gamble but it was a gamble that paid off in the long run for both the UFC as a company and for MMA as a sport.  The ground work laid by the UFC management has lead MMA into the mainstream and the company has reaped the cash rewards of their efforts.  So too have the athletes.

Now other fight promotions are looking to cash in on the sport’s rising popularity and the fact that networks like CBS are suddenly willing to give their product air time.  Unfortunately not all of these promotions are bound by the same scruples that governed the UFC’s slow, deliberate rise to success.

Let me be clear: Ken Shamrock is a Mixed Martial Arts legend.  He was a pioneer, one of the top fighters of MMA’s early era--15 years ago.  The Ken Shamrock of 1993 was a man to be feared but over the past 6 years the 44 year old has suffered 7 losses in 8 bouts, 6 of those losses coming by way of knock out or technical knockout.

Despite his record MMA fans will turn out to watch Shamrock on free television because he is a legend.   Perhaps more important to promoters are the fans Ken will bring from his days as a pro wrestler known as the ‘World’s Most Dangerous Man”.  Ken’s name on a fight card guarantees viewers, too bad promoters can’t, short of throwing this writer into the ring, find an opponent Ken can beat.

Kimbo Slice, the other half of this shameful main event is himself a rising legend, an internet street thug who built a reputation filming his illegal bare-knuckle matches in backyards and back alleys.  Now the street fighter riding the wave of his YouTube notoriety has turned pro – or has he?  No doubt Kimbo, with 3 wins, no losses, is one bad man but his struggles in his last match against James Thompson give experts reason to doubt his developing skill base.

Skilled or not few experts are as worried for Kimbo’s health as they are for Shamrock’s.  Didn’t the boxing commission refuse to license Joe Mesi in the prime of his career?  At least six years past his prime, this writer wishes that the athletic commission would step up to protect Shamrock from himself or at least relegate him to ‘legends’ match-ups against other old timers like himself such as Kimbo Slice’s own trainer Bas Rutten.

The sport of MMA is a sport of dramatic upsets (see Rashad Evans vs Chuck Lidell, Forrest Griffin vs Rampage or Randy Couture vs pretty much anyone he has fought over his stellar fighting career) so maybe Saturday night the legend will shut up all his critics by pulling out an unlikely victory over the fearsome Kimbo Slice.

It’s possible but not likely.  What is certain is that whoever wins Saturday night, it is the sport of MMA that loses.  The casual viewer tuning in to see a vicious street fighter demolishing an aging athlete will forever remember the MMA as senselessly barbaric.

All that will be accomplished is the tarnishing of the sport that Zuffa and Co have laboured so hard to resuscitate.  And if enough viewers tune in to make it worthwhile, CBS will give the matchmakers at Pro Elite the opportunity to do it again in the future.