Cage Fury Fighting Championships was supposed to present a fight between the street brawler Kimbo Slice and the heavy handed UFC legend "Tank" Abbott this coming Friday night at Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Instead, one of the main investor backed out of the event within the last week, the pay-per-view partner in iNDemand was lost, and now the event has been cancelled. This cancellation brought about many questions as to where this fight would end up at since it wouldn't be happening on the October 12th CFFC card. The fight is now rumored to be pursued by three different organizations: EliteXC, Palace Fighting Championships, and a third organization that was kept hush hush in the rumor. With the huge pursuit to get this fight on someone's card, it begs the question as to what kind of attraction this fight may have to the overall MMA community, casual and hardcore MMA fans as well as the general public fight fans who love to catch a fight they know may have some entertainment value.

Let's look at the overall value of the fight specifically based on the fighters. Mostly seen as a novelty fight, the matchup is between two brawlers who have some heavy hands. Kimbo is most well known for his numerous underground videos in which he knocks out other brawlers in someone's backyard. "Tank" Abbott is known for his huge brawls in the early days of the UFC when matching puncher vs. puncher was a spectacle in itself. For the casual fan who was booing when Sean Sherk fought Hermes Franca for the UFC Lightweight title, this fight is an absolute dream brawl. Setting fan preference aside for a minute, what's the overall popularity of both combatants? Is there enough of a fanbase out there to legitimately make back what you use to promote this fight? Take a look at Kimbo Slice's videos on Youtube. Even the interview pieces have over 300,000 views, and nearly all of the videos have anywhere from 500,000 to 1.2-1.3 million views. Obviously, Kimbo's underground fighting career was popular to the Internet media crowd. Videos like that make people like Kimbo Slice infamous and considered an insurmountable test for anyone to handle. We know that most brawlers can be easily countered by a great ground game and by many of the UFC's stable of fighters. That doesn't matter in this case. Internet infamy always sells. Youtube is a big part of his infamy, especially with the age of Internet streaming video. Clearly, there will be some interest in the fight from non-MMA fans or newer fans of the sport because of Kimbo's popularity.

Entertainment vs. Prime Matchups

This fight brought up some issues that the UFC will eventually have to consider. Should entertaining fights be added to future UFC cards while being mixed in with quality matchups that have impact on divisional matchups and title contention? As a businessman, White should probably consider the draws of some of these bouts. There are a couple of issues to consider when dealing with this prospect. Will entertaining fights degrade the aspect of the UFC that is bringing fans to watch it? Can it capitalize off of a PRIDE-type lineup of a mixture of entertainment bouts and prime matchups?

Let's touch on the PRIDE promotional tactics. PRIDE loves to add these type of fights to their card because they had a love affair pitting David vs. Goliath. One of the biggest cases of the entertainment factor is Minowa or as many know him as "Minowaman". With his grand entrances and unbelievably risky moves he pulled in the PRIDE ring, he was one of those popular Japanese fighters that PRIDE fans in Japan loved to see. He would take fights while weighting 185 against guys like Eric "Butterbean" Esch and various crossover Japanese wrestlers. Other fights include Frye vs. Takayama, and the various brawler battles that PRIDE put on as a spectacle. They didn't have really any bearing in the division. Pitting Fedor against Zuluzinho was a complete joke, but PRIDE also tapped into the popularity of fighters as well. Sapp, Crocop, Fedor, and the list goes on. Many of the world's best drew crowds along side marquee matchups that had impact in PRIDE. Can the UFC also do that?

Does the UFC want to be a legitimately great organization with nothing but marquee matchups and title fights? Sure they do. MMA fights like that will always sell. Do they bring in some of the casual fans who simply want to see a couple of guys standup and kill each other? It's a toss up. When you have some events where a majority of the crowd boos an interesting ground battle, adding standup battles that sell could be a definite plus. Leben vs. Martin and Sell vs. Quarry were the type of fights that excited a crowd like that. What about a Kimbo Slice vs. Tank Abbott though? I think it's something that may be interesting as a preliminary bout in some of the top organizations, but nothing more.

Final thought

Obviously there is an interest in these types of matchups. Should the UFC try to grab them up and market them? I don't think so. I love the fact that marquee matchups and fights that have bearing within the divisions of the UFC blanket cards. I will say that I was interested in the Kimbo vs. Tank fight because I wanted to see how far Kimbo has came along since he is training with Bas Rutten. The casual MMA fan who doesn't follow the sport so meticulously wouldn't realize that though. As far as profitability goes, why not add something like that to the preliminary bouts? I doubt it would ruin credibility considering the UFC holds contracts with some of the best fighters in the world. A fight like that would only add to the buyrate for an event, not decrease it. I wouldn't mind seeing it, but it doesn't really matter. Either way, the fans will see Kimbo and Tank fight each other, along with many other brawler fights in the future.