During my Monday night sports show schedule that leads up to a much anticipated Monday Night Football game between the Chicago Bears and the Minnesota Vikings, I caught the last thirty minutes of Pardon the Interruption. If you aren't familiar with the show, it's a showdown between two Washington Post columnists, Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser. The format of the show revolves around a highlighted stack of topics to the right of the screen. Each topic is commented on by both Wilbon and Kornheiser, and the argumentative spirit of both writers makes the show compelling in seeing the different views of both.

During the final countdown to the end of the show, it was mentioned that it was Chuck Liddell's birthday today. Although the line about Liddell turning 38 was completely ignored, the reason they seemed to bring it up was for Wilbon to pronounce his love for Quinton "Rampage" Jackson. I have seen the show at other times during major UFC events in which Wilbon mentioned that fact that he likes seeing "Rampage" brawl in the cage. What I didn't expect was the next quote:

"All I want to see from that sport is "Rampage" Jackson against Kimbo Slice, wake me when that happens..."

After some chuckling regarding Liddell's recent loss to "Rampage" Jackson, they moved onto other remarks. What does a quote like this say about the status of MMA in the eye of the general public? Can we even make a generalization just based on one person saying what he thinks?

I think this somewhat confirms what some journalists and MMA purists believe wasn't the case about Kimbo Slice. He isn't a guy who is just going to simply sit on the map of the MMA scene and fight these standup brawls with subpar fighters. Eventually, he will shed the spectacle fight image and be popular enough for someone to think about pitting him in some big fights with well-known fighters that aren't Internet video legends. People want to see him fight the best.. already! One of the more interesting things that comes out of that quote is that Kimbo Slice is much bigger than many of the stars of the UFC in the mind of the casual fan. Sure, there are casual fans out there that know about the UFC in detail, but there are certainly many fans who feel the same way as Wilbon. They want to see the brawling Kimbo Slice. It's interesting because when he first came into the sport, people labeled him as just a sideshow and that there wouldn't be a lot of potential revenue to gain from him.

That idea may be obsolete, and we may need to start paying attention to the impact that streaming media and Kimbo Slice has had on his popularity. Will they bring in a circus environment? Only time will tell.