Only a few years earlier Kimbo found himself in relative poverty and even spent time living out of his car, after the 1992 Atlantic hurricane season destroyed his family home and high school. Despite starting MMA at 31 years of age he was able to completely change his life through fighting.

To me, Kimbo Slice defines the American dream. You don’t draw in 6.5 million viewers to a fight against James Thompson and not make a lasting impact, something his ‘haters’ seem to forget. Sure, he didn’t exactly redefine the boundaries of martial arts methodology, but he is undoubtedly a key figure in MMA’s meteoric rise. Fighters such as Akebono, Joe Son and CM Punk never won a single MMA fight, so let’s not pretend that these guys are in the same ballpark as Kimbo Slice. There are plenty of mixed martial artists who haven’t achieved nearly as much success as Slice, but because they weren’t at the pinnacle of the sport they are rarely considered. If he really was one of the worst MMA fighters of all time, ask yourself who he was beating and why few consider them amongst the worst ever. Despite an inferior ground game he did show vast improvements after the Ultimate Fighter and was able to find a great deal of success there, in his UFC win over Houston Alexander.

For one, Kimbo was a competent Boxer with ruthless one-punch knockout power and a really underrated right uppercut. Although Kimbo certainly wasn’t an all-time great when it came to fighting ability, he definitely wasn’t one of the worst either. Prominent mixed martial arts YouTube channel ‘Montage King’ placed Kimbo as the fifth-worst MMA fighter of all time, while Bloody Elbow writer Michael Rome would have a field-day over how much Slice ‘sucked’.

Kimbo slice back to street