Murray's Corner: Some verbal diarrhea on the Kimbo / Thompson fight last night. . .

Firstly, since my peeps only recently declared independence from the British . . I am always favorably predisposed to any pasty Englishman being made to feel pain. My personal bias aside, I think the match was pretty even in terms of ugliness. Kimbos beard may have given him the edge as its hard to know where his chin actually starts . . and Thompson's ear was definitely a distraction. I couldn't help but think he was getting instruction like Kuato, the mutant in Total Recall. Either that or his ear was giving birth. Its ironic that the ref called the fight once the monstrosity was popped. As the Bleacher Report stated "Slice then delivered one to Thompson’s cauliflowered ear, causing it to explode, and just seconds later, doctors stopped the fight, although the only damage to the ear was a little blood and pus dripping out." Read More...

On a technical level . . or as technical as you can get with 2 fighters whose styles are listed as "brawler" and "freestyle" . . Kimbo seemed to be a little more focused and successful in landing those big bombs. Toward the end of the fight he did have a couple of good shots 'on the button' before the fight was stopped. One more good shot despite the exhaustion of both fighters and I think Thompson would have been down. Kimbo went for the guillotine choke while standing a couple of times. This is kind of a rudimentary default from the clinch and totally expected from this level of fighters. A successful standing guillotine takes enormous strength especially from the shorter fighter . . but Kimbo certainly has that in abundance. Where his training with the experienced Bas Ruten showed, was how he dropped his body weight to the ground in an attempt to improve the angle. This is the correct move except you MUST have the choke deep and tight, because if your opponent slips out - as Thompson did more than once - you are left in a compromised position. When the fight did go to ground, Thompson showed greater experience and some wrestling in his background by the way he secured one or both of Kimbos legs. Kimbo, by contrast, had the basic sprawl down but had little more than a scramble on the ground. He was able sweep/pass a couple of times by pure luck and brute strength, but was also effectively stuck, with no skills or game plan at the end of round 2, when Thompson ran out the clock trying to ground and pound. (This too, was pretty pathetic.)

I thought the best fight of the night was between the girls though, between Gina Carano (aka Crush from "American Gladiators") and Kaitlin Young. CBS wisely avoided showing Kaitlin's eye after the match was called . . but if you managed to catch a glimpse, it was impressively gnarley! Not quite as much as the exploding Kuato-ear, but still enjoyable.
-Murray