There’s a unique appeal to MMA. For all the aims of streamlining clothing suppliers and eliminating unseemly sponsors that the UFC has, the sport is bigger than just their aspirations, and it catches eyes for reasons beyond them.
One major way that the sport catches eyes is the freakshow fight, the fistic equivalent of watching a man swallow a flaming sword at the county fair. There was a time when the sport embraced the freakshow with more regularity—there may even be an argument that the entire sport in North America was born out of the concept of a freakshow tournament—but it’s grown infrequent in recent years.
Sure, the UFC offered up Anderson Silva and Nick Diaz this year, but that was more fun than freakish. Prior to that bout, the last UFC freakshow was probably Randy Couture’s destruction of James Toney at UFC 118.
In the present age of MMA, where FOX Sports largely rules the day and promotions outside of the UFC have been smothered into irrelevancy, a good freakshow is hard to come by.
Or at least it was, until now.
Bellator 138 will see the first proper freakshow fight in years on Friday night, when 51-year-old veteran of UFC 1 Ken Shamrock will enter the cage against 41-year-old YouTube sensation and veteran porn security kingpin Kimbo Slice.
Neither man has had an MMA bout since 2010. The world has been waiting that long to see them return. That’s a tongue-in-cheek proclamation, but only slightly. There’s an odd appeal to each guy, a charisma sadly lacking in the vast majority of the sport these days.
Shamrock is an absurdity even by fight game standards, stomping around promising to beat grown men into “a living death” while operating training camp for his triumphant return from the confines of a motor home parked at a mini-mall.
In the time since the world last saw him, he kind of reunited with his estranged half-brother, signed on for a pikey boxing match, found God and circled back to MMA by signing with Bellator. This return bout is a rebooking of a fight that was called off in 2008 due to an injury on the eve of an EliteXC event, an injury that essentially sunk that promotion outright.
And the return comes against Slice, whom Shamrock hates with an enthusiasm usually reserved for religious zealots and hungry animals closing out a hunt. His story has been told so many times it’s become lore: He was the baddest dude on the streets of Florida, beating up men in backyards for years until someone started to tape him doing it. He proved he was good enough at it to make it in MMA to the tune of a 4-2 record, and pro boxing at 7-0.
This is, putting it mildly, the exact type of fight that MMA needs.
Too often now the sport is obsessed with rankings and the thrust for a title shot or a title itself, largely due to the fact that UFC holds such a sizable chunk of the market share and legitimacy is increasingly becoming their game.
Bellator, under the shrewd guidance of former Strikeforce boss Scott Coker, is actively going in a different direction. Accepting the occasional carnival showcase and the appeal that such a showcase has with fans, Coker is looking to get as many eyes as he can with fun fights in hopes of those eyes seeing the legitimate talent he has in the fold as well.
It’s a brilliant strategy, but one that’s built on a simple premise unique to MMA: Freakshows sell.
No other sport can claim that as a time-tested, proven reality. It would be difficult to get people to pay $60 to watch the retirees of the 1999 St. Louis Rams play some second-tier English rugby club in a game of soccer, or to see if John McEnroe could beat Mike Tyson in a game of frisbee golf.
Such offerings are simply too absurd. People who are fans of those sports are not attracted to such insanity.
However, MMA is that insanity. It was founded as that insanity; it evolved with that insanity; it continues to be that insanity.
Ignoring that fact borders on insulting to the fans and athletes who’ve been around since the beginning, while embracing it, even occasionally as Bellator is doing this weekend and has done in the past, serves as a license to print money.
Mixed martial arts is not mainstream. It never will be. One of the biggest benefits of that reality is the capacity to book a total circus attraction as a main event, then sit back smoking a cigar and counting the Benjamins that reward such ingenuity.
Kimbo Slice vs. Ken Shamrock is one such circus attraction, one such freakshow. The appeal is undeniable, and the benefit is all Bellator’s to reap.
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