Today Kimbo Slice’s trainer, Bas Rutten, responded to those who have been asking (bugging) for his thoughts regarding Kimbo’s performance at Saturday’s EliteXC event. Rutten addressed the mixed martial arts community via his website, www.basrutten.tv to defend Kimbo from the criticism he subsequently faced from many MMA fans and writers.

Of course I have been asked now already many times what I thought about Kimbo’s fight and performance.

First let me start by saying: “It was his 4th fight”.

The fight was hyped up so big that Kimbo needed a perfect performance to live up to the hype. Thompson had the chance of his life time so he trained insanely hard. People expect him to go down but they forgot that he stopped Don Frey and Hidehiko Yoshida, he has a suspect jaw, but he came in to fight!

I think this fight is going to be very good for Kimbo in the future. When you start fighting and competing and you never went the distance in a fight you never know what “getting really tired” means.

Ask any fighter on the planet if they fought more than 1 round when they fought their first couple of fights, how they felt. They will tell you that they thought they were in great shape but got tired really fast.

In training you can do pretty much anything to bring your heart rate up. Focus mitts, Thai pads, takedowns, running hills, explosive weight training etc. but NOTHING compares to getting tired in a fight, it’s just a whole different ball game.
But once you know this and experienced it one time, you know what to expect in the future.
That’s why I think that this fight was great for Kimbo, he really had to dig deep and boy did he do that. He was so tired at the end of round it was crazy, but he went out in round three and just started throwing bombs again, that says a lot to me about his will power, trust me, it has been tested here! (more…)

Awhile ago I wrote that I didn’t think Gina Carano was all that cute, in fact she was a bit too “think” for my taste. You readers ripped me a new one with all of your comments. Since that posting I’ve come around and have seen the light, even more so after tonight’s EliteXC show. Now I feel it is my duty focus a bit more MMA’s hottest fighter.

All About Gina Carano:

Middle Name: Joy
Hometown: Las Vegas
Status: Single
Sexual Orientation: Straight
Favorite Book: The Bible
Hero: Jesus
Sign: Aries

On to the Gina Carano photo gallery (sorry, no nude Gina Carano pictures out there, yet):

Pro Elite just posted a video clip of the press conference for the EliteXC “Renegade” event to be held on November 10th. The vid focuses on the Kimbo vs. Bo Cantrell fight.  Nothing too exciting from the fighters but Gary Shaw does talk about the signing of Kimbo. You can check it out on the Pro Elite website, HERE

Pro Elite just released the poster for the EliteXC event to be held later this month.  It definitely has a better design than the latest lame UFC poster, but I think they need to take Shayna (or it Jen?) out of the mix.  If they ever hope to become as big of an MMA organization as the UFC, they are unfortunately going to have to drop their female division.  You can say all you want about equal rights, but trust me, it isn’t adding any true mass appeal to their cards and isn’t going to increase ticket sales. 

Here are the current betting odds as determined by Bodog for tonight’s EliteXC event.

Middleweight EliteXC Title Fight
Robbie Lawler -200
Murilo Rua +160

Middleweights
Nick Diaz -850
Mike Aina +550
 
Welterweights
Jake Shields -600
Renato Verissimo +400

Middleweights
Riki Fukuda -150
Joey Villasenor +120

Womens Bout
Gina Carano -600
Tonya Evinger +400

We think this should shape up to be a solid night of mixed martial arts.  Find someone who has Showtime!  

On September 15th, EliteXC will feature a stacked MMA event in Hawaii which will be shown live on the Showtime channel.  Five additional matches will be streamed live on ProElite.com before the Showtime main event card. 

Headlining the night we will see “Ruthless” Robbie Lawler taking on EliteXC Middle Weight Champion Murilo “Ninja” Rua.

Also in the action will be two fights billed as “Team Gracie vs. Team Penn” with Nick Diaz vs. Mike Aina and Jake Shields vs. Renato Verissimo. 

If you’re a fan of female MMA matches, you’re in luck as the “sexy” and undefeated Gina Carano faces Tonya Evinger.