Bellator are going all freak-show on us with the announcement that the 41 year-old Kimbo Slice will be making his debut against the 51 year-old Ken Shamrock at an event on June 20th in St. Louis.
As you may well recall, Kimbo and Shamrock were first matched up together all the way back at Elite XC: Heat in 2008.
On that occasion Shamrock pulled out with an injury just hours before the fight which led to Seth Petruzelli stepping in as a replacement and infamously KO’ing Kimbo in just 14 seconds, derailing his hype train and burying the Elite XC promotion in the process.
Now, over six years later, they are finally set to meet in the cage in a fight it’s fair to say no one was really calling for.
Following his loss to Petruzelli, Kimbo managed to make his way into the UFC via The Ultimate fighter Season 10 despite failing to win a fight on the show. He would go 1-1 in the promotion before being released.
Afterwards he moved away from the MMA world to pursue a boxing career, compiling a 7-0 record though the standard of competition left a lot to be desired. He last fought in January of 2013, so it’ll have been two and half years since he’s been in action by the time he faces Shamrock this summer.
As for Shamrock, one of the early pioneers of the sport and a UFC hall-of-famer, he’s also been on the fringes of the sport for a number of years.
After his first fight with Kimbo fell through he would go on to test positive for steroids following his next bout in 2009, a win over the late Ross Clifton who passed away from a heart attack later that year.
Shamrock went 1-2 in the cage after that, with his last fight being a loss due to a first round hamstring injury back in November of 2010.
It probably goes without saying that making a return to fighting almost five years later, by which point he’ll have turned 52, doesn’t seem like such a great idea.
