Since becoming a member of the Middle Easy Brotherhood, I always felt that it is not just my responsibility to deliver all the bizarre and awesome from the world of MMA, but to also provide a service. I feel like I owe it to the MMA culture to educate the next generation. There will be an entire generation of MMA fans that have never seen any other MMA but this white washed, corporate bullshit being fed to us currently. And sure while the fighting is much better and the video quality is supreme, you can’t forget your roots. And the roots of this MMA thing go deep, motherfuckers.
One key staple of early MMA internet culture (that was a real thing even back when there was only the UG), besides trading MMA VHS tapes with your friends, was street fights on YouTube. Specifically, the internet street fights of one Kimbo Slice, may he rest in power. But Kimbo Slice and the shady ass people financing those backyard, dry boat dock fights were some entrepreneurial fuckers. They wanted to parlay Kimbo’s hype onto his protege, a dude known as Ray. In one fight the singularly named Ray, knocked some fool out too quickly. See, you can’t sell a street MMA tape of a 20 second knock out. So onto the scene enters one “Gamebred” Jorge Masvidal…
With an amazing head of hair, tied up in a samurai top knot, the clearly smaller Masvidal made it known from the get go. He had zero fucks to give.
After this massive war, Ray quits to a body shot from Masvidal. You can see just how beat up and broken Ray was after the fight, slumped against a car, Kimbo yelling for his crew to hold his arms up. Poor Ray just wasn’t quite ready for this tiny Cuban kid to be a god damn animal. But this wouldn’t be the end. See there was probably a dumb amount of illegal money behind making Kimbo and Ray popular. And those financial interests would not be disappointed. So naturally, a rematch for redemption was immediately put into place. Funny how promoting illegal bare knuckle fights in a backyard isn’t so different from promoting MMA.
In the rematch, which seems to have happened in some random white dude’s backyard, both fighters knew that they’d be in for a long and evenly matched war after their first fight.
And Jorge proves to the streets of Miami that the first fight was no fluke.
It’s kind of amazing that not only did Masvidal go on to fight professionally, but that he continued to fight professionally until this Saturday where he will fight in what is essentially a number one contender bout for the welterweight title of the world. That is why I cannot help but love Jorge Masvidal. A McDonald’s eating, street fighter from Miami turned himself into a world class fighter. All the while having a career that has endured longer than 99% of his peers. The man is a gift from the MMA Gods. And he’s got fantastic advice of how to handle beef in the streets.
