FanHouse KimboSlice

Kimbo Slice is viewed by many as nothing more than a marketing gimmick, a street fighter with no real mixed martial arts skills whose status as one of America's most popular fighters is a black eye for MMA.

But one fighter who indisputably does have real mixed martial arts skills -- World Extreme Cagefighting featherweight champion Mike Brown -- says Kimbo is great for the sport. Brown, who trains alongside Kimbo at American Top Team, said in an interview with FanHouse Wednesday that he believes Kimbo is preparing the right way and will be a successful fighter in the UFC.

James Thompson is best known to American MMA fans for having his ear blown up on national television in an ugly loss to Kimbo Slice last year. As he prepares to fight Alistair Overeem in Japan on Sunday morning, his cauliflower ear looks good, and he says he feels great and is ready to fight Overeem. Unfortunately for Thompson, Overeem is likely to bust him up a lot worse than Kimbo did.

LOS ANGELES -- At Thursday's UFC 104 press conference, Dana White talked about some of the controversy surrounding this season's edition of The Ultimate Fighter. White took exception with Roy Nelson claiming Kimbo Slice got special treatment on the show, and called the former IFL heavyweight champion an "idiot" and a "jacka**." White also called this season's cast members "a bunch of crybabies."

White also brushed off Rampage Jackson's claim that the show's editing is making him look bad. Check out the video below. (Warning: video contains some explicit language.)

Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas is such a big MMA fan that he named his dog after Forrest Griffin. (Surprisingly, though, the dog's name is Griffin, not Forrest.) And after to talking to him about his love for all things MMA recently, it's probably safe to assume that few professional athletes enjoy watching the sport more than the veteran netminder.

The winner of the 2009 Vezina Trophy for the NHL's best goaltender discussed how he was drawn to MMA, why he thinks the fighters should get paid more and whether he would ever step into a cage or ring himself. The full interview is below.

In a wide-ranging interview on ESPN's Jim Rome Is Burning, UFC President Dana White talked about why Kimbo Slice is in the UFC, why Fedor Emelianenko could still end up in the Octagon and why Herschel Walker never will -- and he said a fight between middleweight champion Anderson Silva and light heavyweight champion Lyoto Machida could happen in 2010.

The ratings are in for Wednesday night's episode of The Ultimate Fighter: Heavyweights and Kimbo Slice now stakes claim to three of the top four most-watched MMA fights on US television.

The episode at 10 pm ET, featuring Slice's fight against former IFL heavyweight champion Roy Nelson, drew 5.3 million viewers and peaked at 6.1 million viewers when the fight itself aired within the episode at 10:45 pm. The third episode totaled 6.8 million viewers with the inclusion of the immediate repeat at 11 pm, which pulled in 1.5 million.

It's a slow week in MMA, so it's no surprise that as we open up the latest installment of the UFC Twitter mailbag, it's all about Kimbo Slice.

Many readers took issue with me when I tweeted on Wednesday that I came away impressed with both Kimbo and Roy Nelson. Others are wondering when Kimbo is going to take his MMA training seriously enough to develop into a complete mixed martial artist, and how long it will take Kimbo to be competitive in the UFC.

Your questions and my answers for our UFC Twitter mailbag are below.

For better or worse, Roy Nelson and Kimbo Slice are the current talk of the MMA world. After Nelson defeated Slice on Wednesday's episode of The Ultimate Fighter, FanHouse spoke to the former IFL heavyweight champion about some of the criticism he has since received from Dana White and the fans, Herb Dean's decision to not stop the fight in the first round and Kimbo Slice's entourage.

The full interview is below.

We all know that Kimbo Slice needs to get much, much better on the ground if he's ever going to win a fight in the UFC. But if you want to try to quantify just how much better Roy Nelson was than Kimbo when they fought on Wednesday's Ultimate Fighter, take a look at the CompuStrike stats: Nelson landed 67 strikes on the ground. Kimbo landed zero.

We knew heading into this season of The Ultimate Fighter that Roy Nelson is bigger, stronger and more skillful than Kimbo Slice, and that Kimbo needs to get better on the ground. So in one respect, Nelson's second-round TKO victory over Kimbo on Wednesday night's episode of the UFC's reality show didn't teach us much.

But even though Nelson beat Kimbo decisively, I came away from their fight more convinced than I was before that Kimbo is worthy of fighting in the UFC. I also came away more convinced than I was before that Nelson is the favorite to win this season's Ultimate Fighter tournament.