(Friends forever? Photo courtesy of AllElbows.com)
It’s hard to even get up the energy to mock Jared Shaw anymore. He’s just so damn irrelevant. But in talking about the role Kimbo Slice’s loss to Seth Petruzelli played in EliteXC’s collapse, he summed up the company’s fundamental failures without even realizing it:
"I stick up for him a lot because we put so much weight on his shoulders because we had to, we needed a face. No, we didn’t expect him to be the world champion. We knew if he fought the kind of fighters that were at that level that his chances of winning were probably slimmer," said Shaw. "But you’ve got to throw somebody up there as the best in the world, because you’ve got to put a face on the company. And that’s not to say he can’t become one of the best fighters in the world, cause he’s an athlete, he has talent, but that was the situation we were up against."
To recap:
1) EliteXC did not actually believe that Kimbo was the best fighter in the world.
2) They went ahead and tried to sell fans on the idea that he was the best fighter in the world because, hey, somebody has to be.
3) They didn’t explicitly know that Kimbo couldn’t one day become one of the best fighters in the world, so it wasn’t that egregious of a lie.
4) They felt it was unfair that they and Kimbo were in the situation they had both knowingly put themselves in.
You starting to remember why EliteXC didn’t stick around that long?
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I’m actually not so much a Kimbo h8r.cuz i used to like watching his street fights. just kinda a Kimbo skeptic. He’s a cool personality though. no one man should have to shoulder a company like that.it was insane all the crap cbs was asking him to do to promote the events.I’d still like to see Kimbo fight somewhere though. maybe he could go to zombie pride. seriously I think that would be a good fit for him. then maybe later on strikeforce.whatev though so Kimbo’s acting in porn now huh.