Gary Shaw’s Version of Conor McGregor Was Kimbo Slice

Published

8 years ago

August 23, 2017

It has been suggested that, at this 21^st century stage of human development, there is no such thing as a truly original idea, only gussied-up versions of previous attempts at creating something unique. Perhaps more so than anyone else, Gary Shaw understands the rationale for pairing boxing great Floyd Mayweather Jr. and mixed martial arts sensation Conor McGregor. It’s basically the same notion that Roman emperors and their minions had when they would pit captured beasts from faraway lands, say a lion and a tiger, in the Colosseum. The Roman satirical poet Juvenal (circa 100 A.D.) coined the phrase “bread and circuses” to describe the practice of staging elaborate and costly games – chariot races, anyone? — in order for those in power to maintain control by periodically distracting their increasingly bored and restless subjects.

Boxing has not been around forever, although it sometimes seems like it, so Mayweather vs. McGregor, to be contested under boxing rules, has been relentlessly hyped as a fresh twist on a familiar format. Can the preening Mayweather, staunch upholder of his sport’s status quo, preserve order by putting away McGregor, a crass party-crasher from another combat-sport discipline? The lion again is doing battle with the tiger for entertainment purposes, and all indications are that pay-per-view and gross-revenue records will fall like tall wheat before the scythe.

But there is nothing really new or innovative about Mayweather vs. McGregor, except for the fact that each man’s reputation in his own realm is such that they come into Saturday night’s megafight at Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena (to be televised via Showtime Pay Per View) with large, established fan bases that will be augmented by untold millions of the curious lured by what they’ve been promised is an event unlike anything they’ve ever witnessed. And maybe what will be delivered will prove at least somewhat worthy of the stiff tariff ponied up by on-site attendees and PPV subscribers, although Shaw has grave reservations.

“I don’t see any MMA fighter beating a boxer under boxing rules, especially one of Floyd’s class,” said Shaw, who has been on both sides of the philosophical chasm as president of his own boxing promotional company, Gary Shaw Productions and president of now-defunct EliteXC Live Events, a failed MMA challenger to the supremacy of UFC. “The footwork is different. Going from four-ounce gloves to eight-ounce gloves is an immense difference. Plus, a boxer is used to seeing where his opponent is, in terms of technique and distance. It’s not the same in MMA, where there’s standup but also kicking and ground-and-pound.

“Unless I’m very wrong, this is a fight that isn’t a real fight at all. I can’t imagine there’s any way that Mayweather can possibly lose. Now, if the fight was under MMA rules, McGregor would be just as much of a sure thing. He’d take Mayweather down quickly because Floyd doesn’t have those skills, and you can’t pick them up in an eight-week training camp. You just can’t.”

Now that he’s sold his boxing promotional company to Roc Nation Sports, with which he briefly was affiliated (“I lasted there about three weeks,” he said of an operation that appears to still be seeking its footing) and EliteXC has long since gone belly-up, Shaw, now 72, doesn’t have a reason to root for either of the expletive-spewing principals or their sport of origin. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have an interest as to what happens as, a decade or so ago, he had his own dream of creating a crossover superstar who could straddle the worlds of boxing and MMA like the Colossus of Rhodes. The vehicle through which Shaw would achieve such sweeping success was, much like McGregor, bearded, lefthanded, possessed of crushing punching power and a menacing scowl that could melt lead.

Shaw’s candidate for the kind of superstardom that many seek but few attain came into this world on Feb. 8, 1974, in Nassau, the Bahamas, as Kevin Ferguson. Most came to know him by his nom de guerre, Kimbo Slice. His legend withered before it had much chance to take root, but there can be no denying that Kimbo, who was just 42 when he died on June 6, 2016, was for a time considered to be larger than life, a comet streaking across the sky. Just as McGregor arrives at this juncture with liberal splashes of charisma and a compelling back story (see Wright Thompson’s enthralling profile in the Aug. 21 issue of ESPN the Magazine), Kimbo had an undefinable something that drew people to him like moths to an open flame. Shaw’s ambitious plan was to take Kimbo, who came to widespread attention through YouTube videos of unsanctioned, bare-knuckle brawls that saw him destroy opponents with Tysonesque brutality, and make him into the heavyweight champion of the world.

“Kimbo is one of those people that comes along every once in ages who has what I call the it factor,” Shaw said in the late spring of 2009. “I have a lot of fighters who come to me and are great talents but don’t have the it factor. Manny Pacquiao has the it factor. He’s a star. He reeks of stardom. People gravitate toward him.

“Kimbo is that way. When he walks into a room, he lights up that room. People yell `Kimbo! Kimbo!’ It doesn’t have anything to do with how he did in his last fight. It has to do with the it factor. When Tyson walks into an arena, everyone stands up. He’s Mike Tyson, of course, but he’s got that it factor.”

The phenom known as Kimbo Slice was first brought to my attention by my son Randy, who asked me to check out a YouTube video of the thickly muscled former linebacker’s backyard demolition of some large, hairy guy whose name now escapes me. It was a cruder, more violent and much-abbreviated version of Sonny Liston disassembling Floyd Patterson. But being unofficial ruler of Miami’s street-fighting scene to king of the ring is a quantum leap, so I paid no heed to rumors that already were circulating that this baddest of badass dudes might soon be trying his hand at, you know, actual boxing.

Depending upon which version of the story one chooses to believe, the 6-foot-1, 240-pound Kimbo Slice was either 0-0 in sanctioned boxing matches (according to BoxRec.com) or 7-0, with six knockouts (Wikipedia). Shaw said those seven bouts were indeed legit, and who cares if the list of Kimbo’s victims – James Wade, Tay Bledsoe, Charles Hackmann, Brian Green, Jesse Porter, Howard Jones and Shane Tilyard – is hardly a who’s who of professional pugilism. Pulverizing power might be the rawest and most primal of a fighter’s resources, but it can camouflage a lot of technical shortcomings. But before he could put himself into a position (if ever that was a possibility) to challenge either or both of the Klitschko brothers, Kimbo gave up his boxing dream to sign with UFC, whose president, Dana White, no doubt had taken note of the high ratings Kimbo’s MMA appearances on CBS had garnered for EliteXC.

Could Kimbo ever have approached anything even remotely close to the boxing potential as envisioned for him by Shaw?

“He wasn’t really young enough (37 when he ostensibly made his pro debut with first-round, 17-second knockout of Wade on Aug. 13, 2011) to be trying to make the transition, but he might have done well had he stuck with it,” Shaw said. “He was just so immensely strong that if he caught anybody on the chin, the fight was over. But he didn’t really train to put it all together in the boxing ring.”

Nor did Kimbo justify his initial burst of popularity in MMA (a 5-2 record with three knockouts in sanctioned matches, 1-1 in exhibitions). It factor or not, the onetime University of Miami football player and father of six with the made-for-Hollywood past (he had worked as a bouncer in a Miami strip club and later as a limousine driver and bodyguard for a pornography production company) had exploitable weaknesses both inside the ring and the octagon. He had dubious stamina, which virtually obliged him to end matters within mere minutes of a fight’s beginning, and, at best, negligible skills in MMA other than a big punch. What’s worse, his reputation was sullied when Sam Petruzelli, a last-minute fill-in for the injured Ken Shamrock in the main event of a CBS-televised card on Oct. 4, 2008, claimed he was pressured to stand up and trade shots with Kimbo, instead of taking the fight to the ground where his ju-jitsu skills might give him an edge. Whether the accusation was true or not, it spawned enough of a scandal that CBS pulled out of its deal with EliteXC and the organization eventually folded.

It is Kimbo’s brief encounter with “Merciless” Ray Mercer, an Olympic heavyweight gold medalist and former WBO heavyweight champion, however, that adds an element of intrigue to Mayweather-McGregor. An accomplished boxer, even if he was then 46, Mercer lasted only 72 seconds against Kimbo in their June 23, 2007, exhibition match in Atlantic City, tapping out after Kimbo got him in a guillotine choke hold. But in an actual sanctioned MMA bout, Mercer knocked out a highly decorated MMA veteran, Tim Sylvia, in nine seconds on June 13, 2009, putting him down and out with the first punch he threw.

If there is anything that can be taken from the strange journey of Kimbo Slice, who died of heart failure shortly after a mass on his liver was diagnosed, it is this: lions should remain lions and tigers should remain tigers. Without question Conor McGregor is a better mixed martial artist, and probably boxer, than Kimbo ever was, but then Floyd McGregor Jr. is no James Wade. You can, ahem, slice it any way you want and it still projects to be a mismatch.

“Mayweather is the dean of spatial relationships,” Shaw said. “He knows how close he can go to another fighter without that fighter connecting on Floyd’s chin. He is an absolute master of spacing, which is the key to hitting and not getting hit back. He’s been doing this for many, many years. He’s become, like, a professor of boxing.”

And what of Mayweather dropping hints that he will go for the gusto and take the kind of risks he has rarely taken in the past against a boxing neophyte like McGregor?

“He’s not going to change his style against McGregor,” Shaw predicted. “Why should he? What he’s been doing has worked for him all this time. He’s a highly skilled fighter, maybe one of the all-time greats in any era. I know some of the stuff he does outside the ring turns people off so they just don’t like him, but a lot of those people are going to pay to see him in the hope of seeing him get a come-uppance.

“It was the same thing with Mayweather-Pacquiao. I didn’t believe that would be a real fight, a competitive fight, and I don’t believe this one will be, either. The only bad thing is if it’s a repeat of Mayweather-Pacquiao, with Floyd so dominant that it’s seen as boring, it’ll have a negative effect on all the pay-per-views to follow. It’ll leave a sour taste.”

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Gene Hackman’s Involvement in Boxing Went Deeper than that of a Casual Fan

Published

12 hours ago

February 27, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Gene Hackman’s Involvement in Boxing Went Deeper than that of a Casual Fan

“Of all the celebrities I’ve met, he’s probably my favorite. He’s just an average guy.” So said Michael Nunn during his heyday as a world middleweight champion. It was an observation echoed by Nunn’s trainer Joe Goossen. “He’s not really what you would expect a superstar actor to be,” said Goossen. “He doesn’t think he’s a star. He thinks he’s just an actor.”

They were talking about Academy Award winning actor Gene Hackman who was found dead in his sprawling Santa Fe, New Mexico, home yesterday (Feb. 26) along with his wife of 34 years, the classical pianist Betsy Arakawa, and one of their two German shepherds. Hackman was 95 years old. No foul play is suspected.

People forget how good Michael Nunn was in his prime. During his 27-month reign as the IBF world middleweight champion, which began in July of 1988 with a seventh-round stoppage of former Olympic gold medalist Frank Tate, Nunn defeated Juan Domingo Roldan, Sumbu Kalambay, Iran Barkley, Marlon Starling, and Donald Curry. His 88-second blast-out of Kalambay was named The Ring magazine’s Knockout of the Year and he was at or near the top of everyone’s Pound-for-Pound list.

Michael Nunn was the jewel of the Ten Goose stable until he pulled up stakes and left one day, returning to Davenport, Iowa, the blue-collar Mississippi River town where he was raised by a single mother in the city’s poorest neighborhood. The name Ten Goose referred to the siblings, the 10 children – eight boys and two girls — of Al and Anna May Goossen. A former Los Angeles police detective who found time to helm the Sherman Oaks (CA) Little League program, Al encouraged his sons to get involved in sports. They all excelled on local sandlots, and three found their way into boxing; Dan as a promoter, Joe as a trainer and a TV boxing pundit, and Patrick as a fighter – he lost to Hector Camacho and Roberto Duran when both were well past their primes and left the sport with a 19-3 record.

Gene Hackman, a regular at the monthly Ten Goose cards at the Reseda Country Club when he wasn’t off somewhere on a movie shoot, became something of a surrogate brother to the Goossen clan. When a Ten Goose fighter such as Michael Nunn or one of the Ruelas brothers was fighting out of town, Hackman would be there if he could fit it into his schedule.

Before making his mark on the big screen, Hackman, a former U.S. Marine, appeared in numerous TV series and on Broadway. Nominated for five Academy Awards, he won Best Actor as “Popeye” Doyle in the “French Connection” (1971) and Best Supporting Actor for his role as the evil Sheriff in the Clint Eastwood Western “Unforgiven.”

“The French Connection,” which also won Best Picture, has the most spectacular chase scene in any movie, a chase between a car, commandeered by “Popeye,” and an elevated subway train in Brooklyn. Hackman’s other credits are too numerous to list, but a personal favorite is “Scarecrow” (1972) where Hackman plays a vagabond recently released from prison, opposite Al Pacino.

Both the late Dan Goossen and Joe Goossen served as technical consultants for several of Gene Hackman’s movies, notably “Split Decisions” (1988). One of Hackman’s lesser films, “Split Decisions,” co-starring Jennifer Beals, is part sports film and part crime drama. Hackman plays a boxing trainer named Danny McGuin.

Another Goossen brother, the late Greg Goossen, served as a stunt double on several of Hackman’s movies and had small speaking roles in 15 Hackman movies. Greg made it to the Major Leagues as a catcher, appearing in 193 games across parts of six seasons, mostly as a back-up with the sorry New York Mets.

Postscript:

Michael Nunn’s title reign ended with a thud on May 10, 1991, when he was stopped in the 11^th-round by James Toney. Nunn’s corner, which included Angelo Dundee, threw in the towel after Nunn pulled himself upright on shaky legs after being decked with a thunderous left hook. Nunn, 36-0 heading in, was ahead on the scorecards by margins of 8, 6, and 4 points before the roof fell in on him. Although the 22-year-old Toney also came in undefeated and would go on to carve out a Hall of Fame career, this was a huge upset.

Nunn went on to capture the lineal super middleweight title before leaving the sport with a record of 58-4 (33 KOs). In his final stab at a world title, he lost a split decision to Graciano Rocchigiani in Berlin in a bout for the vacant WBA light heavyweight title, a fight that would be shrouded in controversy, not because it was a terrible decision but because Rocchigiani’s corner was allegedly informed of the score after each round. By then, Michael and Joe Goossen were back together.

The streets from which Michael Nunn escaped eventually reeled him back in. On August 6, 2002, eight months after his final fight, Nunn was arrested by an undercover FBI agent at a Davenport motel. Charged with purchasing cocaine with intent to distribute, he was sentenced to 24 ½ years. The sentence was longer than what prosecutors had recommended. Witnesses testified that Nunn was involved in the drug trade as far back as 1993 and it mattered that Nunn had previous arrests in Davenport for battery on police officers.

Nunn was released in 2019.

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Greg Haugen (1960-2025) was Tougher than the Toughest Tijuana Taxi Driver

Published

4 days ago

February 24, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Greg-Haugen-1960-2025-was-Tougher-then-the-Toughest-Tijuana-Taxi-Driver

Many years ago, this reporter overhead ring announcer Chuck Hull gushing over a young boxer who was fairly new to the professional game. “This kid,” he said, referencing Greg Haugen, “is another Gene Fullmer.”

Hull, who would be inducted posthumously into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, was very familiar with Fullmer, a boxer he greatly admired. The ring announcer had worked two of Fullmer’s title fights, Gene’s 15-round decision over Sugar Ray Robinson in March of 1961 and his 10^th-round stoppage of Benny “Kid” Paret later that year.

There was a stylistic similarity between Haugen and Fullmer, but the comparison went beyond that. When the cognoscenti in New York got their first look at Gene Fullmer, they dismissed him as just another good club fighter. It was preposterous to think that one day he would defeat the great Sugar Ray Robinson, and never mind that Sugar Ray’s best days were behind him. (Fullmer and Robinson fought three times. The middle fight was a 15-round draw. Robinson won the first encounter with a vicious one-punch knockout.)

Likewise, even after recording three consecutive upsets in 10-rounders at the Showboat in Las Vegas, Greg Haugen was considered nothing more than a good club fighter. He had a wealth of grit, one could see, but in the eyes of the so-called experts, he was too one-dimensional. It was far-fetched to think that one day he would defeat an opponent as slick as Hector Camacho, but we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Greg Haugen, who passed away last Saturday (Feb. 22) at age 64 in a Seattle-area hospice after a three-year battle with renal cancer, entered the pro ranks after winning Tough Man competitions in Alaska. A native of Auburn, Washington, his first documented fight was in Anchorage. Each of his first five fights was slated for 10 rounds.

Those three upsets were forged against Freddie Roach, Chris Calvin, and Charlie “White Lightning” Brown. Two more fights at the Showboat would follow preceding a date with IBF 135-pound champion Jimmy Paul at the Caesars Palace Sports Pavilion. A protégé of Emanuel Steward, Paul was a product of Detroit’s fabled Kronk Gym.

Haugen was one of the first boxers to cultivate a cult following on ESPN. This owed partly to his attractive young wife and their two daughters, adorable little girls, who appeared on camera a lot as they cheered him on from their ringside seats. That marriage was crumbling when Haugen caught up with Jimmy Paul, but Greg overcame the distraction and captured the title with a hard-earned, 15-round majority decision. According to an Associated Press report, Haugen supplemented his $50,000 purse by getting a $2,000 advance and betting on himself at 4/1 odds.

Haugen lost the title and suffered his first defeat in his first title defense, a 15-rounder with Vinny Pazienza before a rabid pro-Pazienza crowd in Providence, Rhode Island. The “Pazmanian Devil” won five of the last six rounds on all three scorecards to win a unanimous decision, but ended the battle with his face all marked-up. “Many ringside observers, including the majority of out-of-town press, had Haugen the winner,” wrote Boston Globe boxing columnist Ron Borges.

They fought twice more. Haugen recaptured the belt with a wide 15-round decision in the rematch in Atlantic City and Pazienza emerged victorious in the rubber match, winning a 10-round decision. It was a great rivalry. Aggregating the scorecards after 40 bruising rounds, Haugen nipped it 1141-1136.

Between his second and third meetings with Pazienza, Haugen was outclassed by defensive wizard Pernell Whitaker on Whitaker’s turf in Virginia, but Greg’s days as a world title-holder were not over yet.

On Feb. 23, 1991, fighting at 140 pounds, his more natural weight, Haugen became the first man to defeat Hector Camacho, scoring a split decision over the 38-0 Bronx Puerto Rican who was defending his WBO belt. The match at Caesars Palace would have ended in a draw if not for the fact that referee Carlos Padilla docked Camacho a point for refusing to touch gloves at the start of the final round.

For Haugen, a noted spoiler, it was the biggest upset of his career. In the sports books around town, Camacho was as high as a 10-1 favorite.

The rematch in Reno followed a similar tack; it was a very close fight, but Camacho won a split decision and Haugen’s third world title reign, like his first, ended in his first defense.

Haugen returned to Reno the next year where he ended the career of Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, stopping the former lightweight title-holder and future Hall of Famer in the seventh frame. And then, after defeating two fourth-rate opponents, he was thrust into the fight for which he is best remembered.

Greg Haugen vs. Julio Cesar Chavez at Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium wasn’t a great fight, but it was a great spectacle. The announced attendance, 132,247, broke the record set in 1926 when 120,557 jammed Philadelphia’s Sesquicentennial Stadium for the first meeting between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney.

Those that were there will never forget it. Ring announcer Jimmy Lennon Jr recalled that there were little fires up in the far reaches of the mammoth stadium where people were cooking the food they had brought. “I remember thinking that this was more of a mass celebration than just a sporting event,” reminisced Lennon Jr who compared the event to Woodstock in a conversation with Bernard Fernandez for a story that ran on these pages.

Haugen goosed the gate by saying that Chavez had built his record, reportedly 84-0, on the backs of “Tijuana taxi drivers that my mom could whip.” Chavez took it personally and, to the great jubilation of the great multitude, he punished the American before taking him out in the fifth round.

Other boxers since then, lacking Haugen’s originality, have also demeaned their opponent’s conglomeration of former opponents as a bunch of Tijuana taxi drivers. The term seems to have supplanted “tomato cans” as a term of derision. So, Greg Haugen’s legacy extends beyond what he accomplished in the ring. He left an acorn in the storehouse of American slang.

After being manhandled by Julio Cesar Chavez, Haugen sheepishly said, “They must have been very tough taxi drivers.” He would have 15 more fights before leaving the sport in 1999 with a record of 39-10-2 with 19 KOs. In retirement, he trained a few boxers but couldn’t keep at it after suffering nerve damage in his left arm working the pads with a heavyweight.

There were undoubtedly some very tough guys in the ranks of Tijuana taxi drivers, but in a conventional boxing match, Greg Haugen would have likely whipped them all. He was nowhere as great as the stupefyingly sappy post-mortem tribute that ran in a small Washington paper, but he was tough as nails.

Greg Haugen is survived by four children – two daughters and two sons — and five grandchildren. Speaking to Kevin Iole, his daughter Cassandra Haugen said, “He was a good man with a huge heart. He came from nowhere and made himself into a champion, but he was always a kind-hearted man and just the best Dad.”

We here at TSS send our condolences to his loved ones. May he rest in peace.

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Nakatani, Japan’s Other Superstar, Blows Away Cuellar in the Third Frame

Published

4 days ago

February 24, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Nakatani-Japan's-Other-Superstar-Blows-Away-Cuellar-in-the-Third-Frame

WBO world bantamweight champion Junto Nakatani continued his steady advance toward a mega-fight with countryman Naoya Inoue at Ariake Arena in Tokyo tonight with a third-round stoppage of David Cuellar.

After two nondescript rounds, the 27-year-old, five-foot-eight southpaw stepped on the gas and scored two knockdowns before Canadian referee Michael Griffin waived it off. The first knockdown was the result of combination of body punches. As soon as Cuellar got to his feet, Nakatani was all over him. Another combination, this time upstairs, knocked Cuellar on his rump. Looking very discouraged, he made a half-hearted attempt to beat the count and almost made it, not that it would have mattered as he was a cooked goose. The official time was 3:04 of round three.

Nakatani (30-0, 23 KOs) was making his third title defense. He trains in LA with TSS 2024 Trainer of the Year Rudy Hernandez. It was the first pro loss for Cuellar (28-1) who hails from the Mexican city of Queretaro and was making his first start outside his native country.

Nakatani has indicated an interest in unifying the belt which potentially portends three more domestic fights as all four pieces of the 118-pound title are currently in the hands of Japanese boxers. “Bam” Rodriguez and former pound-for-pound star “Chocolatito” Gonzalez sit a division below him and may also be in his future, but the big money is in a showdown with Inoue, the undisputed 122-pound champion. That match-up, when it transpires, will be the first all-Japanese fight to arouse the interest of casual boxing fans around the world.

Other Bouts of Note

Super bantamweight Tenshin Nasukawa took a massive step up in class and was successful, scoring a unanimous 10-round decision over Jason Moloney. The scores were 98-92 and 97-93 twice.

The 26-year-old southpaw has made great gains since his embarrassing loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr on New Year’s Eve of 2018. In that match, the baby-faced Nasukawa failed to survive the opening round and left the ring crying. Heading in to that match, framed as a 3-round exhibition, Tenshin was reportedly 46-0 as a kickboxer and rated in some quarters as the best kickboxer of all time.

After only five pro fights compressed into 30 rounds, the WBA saw fit to rank Nasukawa at #2. He could have embarrassed the organization (check that; the WBA has no shame) by getting his butt kicked by Moloney, a former world title-holder, but Nasakawa (6-0, 2 KOs) rose to the occasion and scored his best win to date. A 34-year-old Aussie, Moloney declined to 27-4.

The 12-round contest between bantamweights Seiya Tsutsumi and Daigo Higa was a spirited contest that ended in a draw. The scores were 114-114 across the board.

The 29-year-old Tsutsumi (12-0-3) was making the first defense of the WBA title he won with a 12-round decision over Takuma Inoue (Naoya’s brother). Higa, also 29 and now 21-3-2, was a former WBC flyweight titlist.

Tsutsumi had an uphill battle after suffering a bad gash on his forehead from an accidental clash of heads in the fourth round. The hill got steeper after Higa put him on the canvas with a left hook in round nine. But Tsutsumi responded with a knockdown of his own in that same round and finished strong, seemingly doing enough to retain his title.

This was their second meeting. Their first encounter in October of 2020, a 10-rounder on a club show at historic Korakuen Hall, also ended in a draw.

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