We were this close to seeing Kimbo Slice doing a moonsault off the top rope. Thanks to ECW Legend Tommy Dreamer, the Kimbo Slice era of MMA cage antics almost never happened. In a different timeline Slice was making appearances on Monday Night Raw and not carrying fringe MMA promo EliteXC to television ratings goodness.
In a new interview Dreamer, who worked as talent relations for the WWE at the time, wanted to take Slice from YouTube sensation to pro wrestling superstar. To the surprise of many, Slice to the WWE was damn close to being a real thing. What a world! James Thompson’s exploding cauliflowered ear oozes a tear or two.
WWE.COM: How extensive was your courting of Slice? Was a deal close at any point?
DREAMER: I spoke with his manager and then I spoke with [Kimbo] briefly and he was down and ready to go — he was a big fan. My job was to look for new talent, [so] I brought the [demo] packet to John Laurinaitis, the head of Talent Relations at the time, and I presented it to him. The handling of how to hire him would have been different because he wasn’t a trained wrestler.
WWE.COM: What could you have seen Kimbo doing in WWE if he had ended up getting signed?
DREAMER: If you think about that time, we had Brock Lesnar and we had Kurt Angle. To me, [Kimbo’s] a modern day Clubber Lang who can really back it up. I can remember being in the crowd when Mr. T hopped the guardrail before the first WrestleMania and when I first saw Slice, I just saw him looking into the camera like Clubber Lang and saying, “Pain.” A guy who is just too extreme for the world and is an underground fighter, and that is how I would have introduced him in WWE. I think he would have been a huge star in our industry if he had pursued it.
