Kimbo Slice vs Ray Mercer CFFC5 june 23 2007Lennox Lewis said Mercer delivered the hardest punches Lewis had ever endured, and that was with gloves that had four ounces of padding. Mercer himself says, ''I knock people out with gloves on, so you can imagine what I'm going to do without gloves.'' Kimbo, 33, smiles that gold smile upon hearing this from the man he calls ``Papa Ray.''''Fun,'' he calls it again.THE BADDEST OF ALLKimbo's fists have made him money for a long time now, near dumpsters and in boatyards and in all that violent footage you can find on shaky hand-held cameras all over the Internet. Entourages keep bringing their biggest bouncers and bodyguards and convicts to fight him, hoping to prove that their guy is the baddest man in all of Miami, but all they leave with is a more deformed friend.It will be interesting to see what he can do against a trained professional instead of some street thug. Mercer -- a 1988 gold medalist -- is old and broken and not in very good shape, but he is more scientific about fighting than anyone Kimbo has ever faced. But Mercer's own kids have warned their father with, ``Dad, that Kimbo guy you are fighting is a beast.''''My dream was to thump Mike Tyson,'' Kimbo says. ``He was a little rude and unsophisticated, but he birthed me.''Kimbo's tale? It is something out of the movies. Think 1978's Every Which Way But Loose, except with a real tough guy and real pain and real blood, not the cinematic Clint Eastwood's Philo Beddoe and his ridiculous chimp. Think Mr. T from Rocky III, back when he was considered a mohawked menace and not a 1980s cartoon and pitied fool. Kimbo Slice is very real, in every way. An evolution of our technology, of our dark side, of our movie fantasies (without the makeup or the made up). Bloody. Raw. Scary. An evolution, into something more primitive.Kimbo Slice, a Miami Palmetto High graduate whose real name is Kevin Ferguson, has been fighting his way through our scarred streets since he was 13, when he beat up a 26-year-old in a brawl over a bicycle and started to grow his mysterious legend of menace.More recently, he has been packaged for our perusal, his savage street fights released strategically in calculated droplets over the Internet by his handlers and usually ''going viral'' with kids who can`t get enough of the raw brutality. Kimbo does not own a computer, but understands its power and reach. His aura has grown in a way that makes it difficult now to find willing street fighters, even as his friends go after the broke and hungry convicts leaving jail.SUBURBAN HEROKimbo goes out of his way to be a kind gentleman, repeating again and again that he doesn't think himself better or more important than anybody just because he is now a celebrity, but he doesn't have much in common with a lot of the people who have made him a phenomenon. Told that a lot of his popularity comes from the suburbs, Kimbo says, ``When they cry, somebody puts a pacifier in their mouth. I've always had to pacify myself.''He says he has never been in prison, just in a holding cell a few times. Asked about his desperate past and possible illegalities, he says politely, ''Let dead dogs lie. Please leave it alone.'' He filled out applications to work at Wal-Mart and Winn-Dixie and Kentucky Fried Chicken, but nobody hired him, even though he tried to change his appearance and personality for potential employers.''Didn't change to be accepted,'' he says. ``Changed to eat.''The worst period? When he lived for two months out of a broken-down truck with shattered windows and four different tires. He remembers that pain, and brings it with him into the cage.''Home was wherever I parked,'' he says. ``Almost got towed once. Had to jump out of the truck and tell the guy I was living inside.''`STILL GOT THE SCARS'His mother worked two jobs and did the best she could but had to move to New York when Kimbo was 18 after Hurricane Andrew destroyed their Perrine home. Kimbo remembers hiding in the bathtub during the storm with his sister and brother and mother, trying to hold a mattress against a shattered window as the roof came off. He remembers that pain, and brings it into the cage with him.''Still got the scars,'' The only thing left after that was survival. Everything else was destroyed. All hopes, all dreams. College got put to the side. We lost everything. Hard. Hard as hell. My entire life has been a fight. Getting into a cage is easy.''''The streets made me,'' Kimbo kept saying.
Author: VoodooPopeye1
Keywords: Kimbo Slice vs Ray Mercer fight CFFC5 submission fights TKO
Added: June 24, 2007



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