![]() His one blotter incident came in 2002, when he was charged with carrying a concealed weapon and an open container the weapons charge was dropped.) A buddy put the fight up on a porn site and immediately got two million hits, which handed Ferguson a new kind of famous with the YouTube generation. (Ferguson himself has never been arrested for a violent act. His first videotaped street fight-a 2003 scrap that traveled from a Miami backyard to the world, the one in which he dropped his fists and kept advancing after letting the sculpted beast across from him take shots at his face, the one that earned him $3,000 for a knockout-was against a dude who'd been terrorizing the neighborhood with crime and fear. Kimbo may have street cred that makes Allen Iverson look like a Tibetan monk, but it was built upon principles.įriends say he has never been a bully, but he likes little else more than fighting them. He has always tried to be honorable about administering it, though. It would, of course, later be his salvation, and America's love of it would be bigger even than his own. It was just about the world's hardest thing not to. It would have been the easiest thing to harm someone and take their money. He found work as a limo driver, a strip-club bouncer, a bodyguard for a porn company-whatever he had to do-until he could move from backseat to cheap apartment. While in that truck, Ferguson talked to himself and to God and asked both to please keep him from temptation and deliver him from evil. And no six kids and their two moms to feed or fail. He hid under a mattress that night as debris pelted him and his mother's home crumbled. This is a man, mind you, who still wears the scars from Hurricane Andrew on his body, like slashes on a gladiator's shield. And that time makes the 6'2", 240-pound, 34-year-old badass cry to this day, just thinking about living and dying in the stink of that damn truck.įor all the fistfighting Ferguson/Slice has done, in the alleys of Miami's darkest corners and now in front of shining lights, that homeless month represents the most scared he has ever been. He tried college at Bethune-Cookman but flunked out. Palmetto's season was shortened, and Ferguson's scholarships disappeared. But then Hurricane Andrew blew through South Florida, wrecking Ferguson's home and hopes. Two years earlier, in 1992, Ferguson had been a middle linebacker at Miami's Palmetto High with the skill to think college ball. And that mind of his-the one that has surprised the CBS suits trying to morph him into an MMA star, that convinced them to sign him for MMA's network debut on May 31-drowned in shame. He was too proud to live with his mother but not too proud to wash the cars of strangers when he got turned down for menial jobs. He bathed in the ocean and pools and went to the bathroom wherever he could. He taped plastic bags to the shattered window to keep most of the rain out. He lived out of a green, 1987 Pathfinder that had four mismatched tires. Kimbo Slice-real name Kevin Ferguson-was homeless 14 years ago. And Kimbo Slice was born to kick ass." You know, before he made that clichéd climb from strip-club bouncer to porn bodyguard to street-brawling Internet legend to broadcast-TV star, ho-hum. Peyton Manning was born to throw a football. Or Lamar Odom said, "Manny Ramirez was born to swing a bat. Or Jason Taylor wanted the best seats to watch him fight. Before Randy Moss approached him like an awestruck teen. Before rap stars requested his menace in their videos. Before he traveled by stretch Navigator limo and private jet. Let's rewind to the most desperate time in the desperate life of a desperate man. — - Editor's note: This piece from Dan Le Batard was originally published by ESPN The Magazine in 2008.
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