Kimbo: I wish I started rolling ten years ago
Kimbo Slice before his fight with Ken Shamrock: “I wish I would have took it serious then and started rolling back then. I would have. I really would have.”
Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson has taken one long, strange trip to become one of the bigger draws in mixed martial arts. Now 41, he famously started out doing bareknuckle boxing bouts on the street. However, there was a local Cuban-Peruvian-American who was bareknuckle boxing too at the same time a decade ago, but had started to train at a legitimate MMA facility.
Jorge Masvidal is now a top UFC fighter, and at the time he tried to get Slice to start taking MMA lessons too.
“He was like, ‘You should come to the gym and leave this s— alone. Come get some real training and be a real fighter,'” explained Slice to Marc Raimondi for MMAFighting.com. “At the time, I was like fresh into streetfighting. I was like, ‘No, this is all me right now. This is how I’m making some money.'”
“I wish I would have took it serious then and started rolling back then. I would have. I really would have. If I had to write a letter to my younger self, I would have told my younger self if Masvidal comes to you and says, ‘Hey you want to start training, leave this s— alone … do it now and get into it.’ But I didn’t. I stuck with streetfighting for another couple of years.”
“Before we can even get on the ground to do any jiu-jitsu, before you can even grab me to wrestle me down, we gotta start off standing up first. So if I got this down pat, you’re not gonna even get to me to take me down. I wont let you. When you come in, I’m gonna catch you with something. That was my mentality then. But then you got these fighters now who can dodge a punch or two to get close to you and they got a f—ing good wrestling game and they can get you down now. Then you’re a fish out of water. I didn’t understand that then. It took a little age, a little time. You know what? I need to know this s—. What if I’m in a worst-case situation?”
Slice put the blame on not learning wrestle seven or eight years ago on Bas Rutten, who he called “a celebrity coach.” Rutten has been far more blunt in past interviews, calling Slice an a——.
“Of course they didn’t do a good job,” said Slice. “What did I know? I didn’t know that I would need to know this. I was just ready to fight whoever you go set up with me to fight.
“I’m always willing to put the work in, because here I am today. If I was that way then, I would be this way now. Just knowing that I needed to evolve. Now being at ATT there’s no choice but to learn.”
“You look at Bernard Hopkins, you look at Smokin’ Joe, you look at Floyd. You look at these guys, as they get older they’re in their primes, unlike the NFL your career is done at 25. At 25 or 30, your career is done. With fighting, it’s completely different.
“I had no intentions of knowing the ground a couple years ago. I didn’t even want to train working on the ground, because I didn’t feel like I would need it. And that’s just how I was back then. With the years, I’ve gotten smarter, gotten wiser.”
Kimbo Slice fights Ken Shamrock in the main event of Bellator 138 on Friday June 19 at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri. The event will air live in prime time on Spike TV.