A little over a year ago an improbable but potentially beautiful rivalry was born when Brett Rogers stepped up to the podium at an EliteXC post-fight press conference to inform Kimbo Slice that his performance against James Thompson was “garbage.”  This led to the infamous, ‘Rogers, you a hater!’ melee, and left most of us assuming that EliteXC would match these two big men up against one another they first chance they got in order to capitalize on the heat.

But what we failed to take into account was that EliteXC was run by morons, so that fight didn’t happen.  Now Rogers is getting back into action on April 11, and FiveOuncesofPain reports that his opponent will be Ron Humphries (5-0) who supposedly fought on that “Iron Ring” show on BET that I didn’t watch beyond the first episode.

So all right, not exactly a marquee matchup, but maybe they plan to build Rogers and Kimbo back up again and then throw them in the mix together later on, right?  Maybe, but Kimbo seems to have other ideas.

The bearded one recently told The Nassau Guardian (which sounds like a tropical drink, but is apparently a newspaper in the Bahamas) that he plans to fulfill the two fights left on his contract and then transition into a sport where he doesn’t have to worry about all that grappling and kicking nonsense:

"Boxing is really my first desire. I have a lot of love for it and believe I can do pretty well. [The sport of] MMA is somewhat of a project for me. Boxing is one dimensional while there are a lot of dimensions in MMA. I don’t think it would be a hard transition from MMA to stand-up boxing because of my fighting style. …When you consider martial arts training, you have to prepare for kicks to the head and legs, and opponents wanting to grapple and throwing you to the ground, pounding you with their knees and hands, whereas in boxing you just have to be prepared to weave and bob although the training can be just as intense. At this point in my career, I want to take that same drive and focus that I invested in MMA and put that into training for pro-boxing cards."

Kimbo claims he has “two more MMA fights scheduled before this year is out,” which is not at all the story that Strikeforce is telling.  Then again, maybe that’s just wishful thinking for Ferg, who wants to hurry up and get this MMA stuff over with so he can get his box on.  After all, how hard could pro boxing be?  It’s just dudes throwing wild haymakers at one another in a salvage yard, right?  Guys?  Right?