The Hyping of Kimbo Slice

Kevin Iole does a masterful job of telling the tale of Kimbo on The Ultimate Fighter: The Heavyweights:

Kimbo Slice, the man Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White mocked mercilessly for more than year, brought the viewers out in massive numbers.

They didn't seem to care that he was coming off a 14-second, first-round knockout loss to a light heavyweight. They didn't seem to care that he landed precious few punches when he was stopped by Roy Nelson in the second round of a one-sided fight in Week 3.

Without Slice, televisions would have been changing from Spike after the second week and wouldn't have been switched back. The one-time street fighter attracted nearly 7 million viewers to Spike to watch his match with Nelson.

Slice was so critical to the season's success that White and the show's producers worked to death the angle of his possible return to competition after his loss. Despite the slew of hints, Slice never did fight again and won't until Saturday, when he meets power-punching Houston Alexander in The Pearl at the Palms Hotel & Casino as part of "The Ultimate Fighter Finale" card.

Yet, ratings were consistently large and were around or even above 3 million viewers on a weekly basis.

Slice, whose real name is Kevin Ferguson, showed himself to be a charismatic, captivating personality. He made you laugh. He made you think.

More than anything, he made you want to watch.

The phenomenon that is Kimbo Slice's impact in pop culture can't be attributed to the UFC. Sure, they and SPIKE TV have capitalized on Kimbo's fame/infamy better than any previous promoter, but the phenomenon happened on YouTube and was manipulated by RealityKings, some of the savviest internet promoters of all time.

Here's Wikipedia's summary of how Kimbo happened:

Ferguson started working as bouncer for a strip club until high school friend and current manager, Mike Ember, offered him a job as limousine driver and bodyguard for RK Netmedia, better known as RealityKings, a Miami-based pornography production/promotion company responsible for a number of popular adult subscription websites. Kimbo still maintains close ties with RealityKings who now accompany him, as his fight entourage, under the name Team Kimbo.

In 2002, he was charged for carrying a concealed weapon and in 2003, he began his career in unsanctioned street fights. They were distributed through the Internet, mainly through the adult website SublimeDirectory and YouTube. In his first taped fight against a man named Big D, Ferguson left a large cut on his opponent's right eye which led Internet fans to call him Slice, becoming the last name to his already popular childhood nickname, Kimbo.

Kimbo was a one-time phenomenon of a new medium -- online video. He personified the frisson of the forbidden, the illicit, the slightly ridiculous, the serendipity of early YouTube. When you felt like the internet was bringing a shady but exciting slice of life from the streets into your home and you could turn it off and keep it under control.

There won't likely be anymore Kimbo's coming out of YouTube. The rise of the UFC has provided a more socially acceptable channel for creating fighting stars, but it's also much much harder to create a legend in the killing ground that is the Octagon than it is to create a myth built around a reasonably tough guy fighting in parking lots and back yards.