The launch of EliteXC (at least on CBS) was a successful one (at least from my in arena perspective). Here's my recap of events (in chronological order, roughly) of the fights.
Since I don't know all that much about the techniques involved in MMA I'll leave that stuff out or just repeat what the fight doctor, TON told me.
We got there pretty early because we wanted to see the undercard/dark matches.
The crowd was pretty good, as you would expect it was mostly young men, in Tapout t-shirts, but it was pretty ethnically diverse and there were more women than I expected, and quite a few good looking ones.
We were really impressed with a 140 pounder named Wilson Reis. He's a jiu-jitsu guy who also appeared to have a pretty decent standup. He tried several submission holds before finally winning with a rear naked choke. He may be too small to ever make a name in UFC but he was really impressive and fun to watch. After his fight he came and joined some family members in the audience right in front of us. He enjoyed the rest of the fights while sitting on the stairs. And he kept taking pictures with people, posing with a fist aimed at their chin. I was going to ask if we could take a picture of him putting me in a rear naked choke, but I decided against it.
The next fight was one of the weirdest fights with a very disappointing ending. Nick Serra, brother of Matt fought, and basically gave up. I can't even really explain it, he jumped and landed on his back, then got up, got kicked in the leg, jumped again and never got up. It was ruled as TKO, apparently he said he could not continue.
The fight after that featured a quitter also. Carlos Moreno did not answer the bell for the second round after getting pounded by former Pittsburgh Steeler Carlton Haselrig.
A little bit before 9, when the CBS broadcast began, they announced that everyone could move down to fill up the lower levels. Evidently they only sold about 8,000 tickets, probably about half of the tickets available.
So everyone started making a mad dash down the steps to the lower bowl. Apparently they didn't alert arena security about this change because when we got down there an overwhelmed security guard was screaming into her walkie-talkie, "they're everywhere."
After that scramble we got pretty decent seats for the part of the card that would be televised live.
Brett "The Grim" Rogers came out to
Busta Rhymes, live. Busta actually entered the cage and continued his performance while Rogers came out. Then Rogers knocked out John Murphy in the first round.
Murphy went to Syracuse University to play football but never quite made it, in a
story that's too long to tell here.
Another quick knockout came from Joey Villasenor. He knocked out New York Bad Ass Phil Baroni who came out to an elaborate intro, then left in a cloud of shame. He used to be in the UFC but with a 10-10 record I can't see his MMA career going much further from here.
Then was the chick fight, Gina Carano vs. Kaitlin Young. In case you don't know,
Carano is kind of hot. She was Crush on American Gladiators. And she can also fight a little. She landed a bunch of good shots, but also took some punishment before finishing off Young who was ruled medically unable to continue, after the 2nd round because of a nasty cut.
Carano didn't make weight, coming in 4 1/2 pounds over. Afterward she said she didn't really focus on her conditioning enough. She reportedly gave 12% of her purse to Young in order for Young to take the fight anyway.
The next fight was the worst of the night, but mostly because of the ending. Robbie Lawler and Scott Smith started off very slowly, not even touching each other for what seemed like an eternity. The bloodthirsty crowd even started to boo. But once these guys got going it was a pretty even fight. It was almost entirely standup with each guy landing a lot of good punches and even a few good kicks. Unfortunately late in the third round, Lawler poked Smith right in the eye. The fight was stopped for a doctor to check out Smith. After shining her light in the wrong eye, she eventually ruled that he couldn't continue. Smith afterward said he just wanted a few minutes, but once you tell the ring doctor you can't see, she's not going to let you get back in there and take more punches. The fight was ruled a no-contest, but the President of EliteXC immediately booked a rematch and said he would pay both fighters the winner's bonus. Smith admitted in his postfight interview that had the fight kept going he probably would have gotten knocked out, but he'd rather get knocked out than end in a no contest.
Finally we got to the main event, featuring internet legend Kimbo Slice. The place was a electric for Kimbo. Even though he's relatively new, the crowd was so into him. The atmosphere was really awesome, and that's the main reason I wanted to see this in person.
As far as the fight went, Kimbo displayed a lot of strengths and weaknesses, both. His ground game and his defense are a lot better than people might have thought, but he was still very vulnerable to the ground game. You could see that he would have killed James Thompson had they stayed up, but when he got to the ground Thompson dominated him. But Kimbo showed some incredible strength to basically push out of some holds.
I don't think he was expecting this fight to be as difficult as it was, nor was he conditioned enough to fight three rounds.
He was really getting his ass kicked at the end of the second round as Thompson had him down against the cage and was dropping elbows on him. It could definitely have been a stoppage but I think the ref held off because Kimbo was defending himself. He was moving his head and his arms to try to avoid the elbows, which I think was enough for the ref to keep the fight going. But Kimbo definitely got saved by the bell.
Kimbo was incredibly exhausted at this point, but he came out for round 3 and landed a bomb to Thompson's badly cauliflowered ear. The ear busted open then Kimbo landed a few more shots before the ref stopped it. I think the ref may have stopped it too soon because I don't think Thompson was out, nor do I think he couldn't have come back if the fight had gone on.
Maybe some people will talk about a fix, but I don't think so. And some people were suggesting that CBS would throw a tomato can against Kimbo just so he could get a win on TV. But Thompson was anything but. He was taking incredible shots, employing a perfect strategy against Kimbo, and doing some damage of his own.
A couple of other notes: there were dancers around the lower level and on the walkway to the cage the whole time. They were definitely local strippers.
There was a small baby at the fight, and a few seconds after we noticed that, the baby's mother started breastfeeding. Definitely not something we expected to see at an MMA event.
The timing was a disaster for CBS and EliteXC. I can't believe they allowed it to go almost an hour over the allotted time, especially since there were a couple of quick knockouts. I have no idea what the fuck they were doing half the time.
A lot of people DVR these things, especially young men on Saturday nights, and even though that doesn't matter for the ratings, if you want people to get hooked on this, you can't alienate them. Plus the Kimbo fight was so awesome, reducing its audience is a horrible mistake.
Also I'm sure local CBS affiliates were not pleased about pushing back the late local news.
All in all I must say I really enjoyed myself at this event. Overall I give the experience a B+ because two fighters quit, and the last two fights had disappointing ends. But all of the 5 CBS fights were very entertaining, and I hope EliteXC puts on more cards and attracts some more talent.
