VICE debuted its premiere episode of ‘Dark Side of the Cage’ this week which focused on the life of Kimbo Slice, a backyard brawler who parlayed his status as an internet celebrity into a legitimate mixed martial arts career.
Unfortunately, Slice’s success in MMA was both short-lived and mired in a controversy that was ultimately glossed over on Wednesday’s initial broadcast.
Long before his stints on The Ultimate Fighter and in Bellator, Slice worked as a limousine driver and bodyguard for his high school friend Mike Imber who went on to help run one of the biggest internet porn sites in the world, Reality Kings. It was on their website that many of Slice’s infamous backyard brawls would appear, making him an instant star.
Slice also appeared in some of the organization’s more adult-oriented fare but always as a non-performing actor.
RIP Kimbo Slice one of the nastiest street fighters we got to see pic.twitter.com/y1D1zPdo1M
— Noncoverage Sports (@noncoverage) June 7, 2016
Slice’s status as an internet phenomenon landed him a contract with EliteXC, a now-defunct promotion that had once signed a lucrative deal with CBS to broadcast multiple events in primetime.
Slice went on to win his first three fights with the organization, but with each victory came allegations of fight-fixing, none more obvious than his 19-second knockout against Bo Cantrell at an event in November 2007. While there is no question whether or not Cantrell took a dive — it’s pretty clear he did — why he did it continues to be a topic of conversation. Was he paid to do so by EliteXC boss Gary Shaw and his rapper son $kala, or was it just too big of a moment for Cantrell to handle and he bailed out?
Perhaps we’ll never truly know, but in his second promotional appearance against Tank Abbott, it was pretty clear that EliteXC wanted Slice to get an impressive-looking win against a name fans would recognize — and Abbott was happy to oblige.
Unfortunately for Slice and EliteXC, things would come to a crashing halt in October 2008. Originally, Slice was scheduled to take on another MMA legend, Ken Shamrock. However, Shamrock bowed out of the bout last minute due to a “cut,” forcing the promotion to scramble for a replacement opponent.
Where were you when you learned a cut had forced Ken Shamrock out of his fight against Kimbo Slice at EliteXC: Heat?
Relive that fateful night and the rest of Kimbo’s rise to fame with VICE TV’s new ‘Dark Side of the Cage’ pic.twitter.com/zILcd04SQa
— MMA Fighting (@MMAFighting) January 7, 2025
Enter Seth Petruzzi, a so-so fighter who had made appearances for King of the Cage and the UFC up to that point.
It took Petruzzi 14 seconds to send Slice crashing to the canvas, scoring one of the most shocking MMA knockouts of the noughties.
The stunning turn of events immediately had fight fans crying foul and claiming that there must have been a fix. As it turned out, the fans were probably right, but they had the whole thing backward.
The following morning, Petruzzi claimed that the EliteXC promoters had asked him to stand and trade with Slice rather than expose his weaknesses on the ground.
“The promoters kinda hinted to me and they gave me the money to stand and throw with him,” Petruzelli said. “They didn’t want me to take him down. Let’s just put it that way. It was worth my while to try and stand up punch him” (h/t Ryan Harkness of MMA Mania).
While EliteXC Quickly Collapsed Following the Controversy, Kimbo Slice Moved On to the UFC and Bellator
After word got around that EliteXC had explicitly asked one of its fighters to compete in a way that was advantageous to Kimbo Slice, it was all downhill for the promotion. EliteXC only ran one more event before folding altogether. Three weeks after its last card, the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation ruled that “there was no legal sufficiency to the claimed violation 548.058 [Sham or collusive contest prohibited] and therefore no need to move forward with a full investigation.”
The ‘Dark Side of the Cage’ episode noted that Petruzelli was offered a $20,000 knockout bonus against Slice, but anything beyond that was purely gossip.
While the controversy killed EliteXC, Slice still had a chance to carve out a career for himself in MMA. The following year, he would appear on The Ultimate Fighter and face Matt Mitrione at UFC 113. He also competed twice under the Bellator banner, finally getting his long-awaited fight with Ken Shamrock and fellow street-fighting celebrity Dada 5000.
Sadly, Slice passed away on June 5, 2016 due to congestive heart failure. He was 42.
Check out the UFC’s episode of FIGHLORE focused on the life and times of Kimbo Slice below:
