THE PROPHET'S TUESDAY TAPOUT... ONE DAY LATE

by The Prophet, ProphetFighting

Welcome to this week's edition of the Prophet's Tuesday Tapout. Yeah, I know its Wednesday, but I couldn't think of a good MMA/boxing related word to go with it. I've actually got a good excuse for being a day late this week. Late Sunday night I was going about my business at home when I went to reboot my computer. The computer booted up to the bios screen and then stopped. I then smelled that lovely chemical laced burning smell indicative of a CPU frying itself.

So basically Monday was shot to hell as I tracked down a new PC, got it set up and started restoring my backups. Backing up a new PC and getting it set up properly is a lengthy, tedious proposition so I didn't get back up to speed until late Tuesday. So the Tuesday Tapout this week is the Wednesday tapout.

And did I mention that I now have Windows Vista? I had resisted upgrading from XP Professional until now but since the PC was preloaded with Vista I figured I'd learn to live with it for awhile. Besides, since its the first non-warez Windows OS I think I've ever had its a novel experience being able to download updates from Microsoft directly.

Anyway, on to the Tuesday Tapout...the Wednesday special edition. And speaking of Wednesday, here's a picture of the actress that played Wednesday Adams in "The Adams Family" movie and the woman I hope to marry one day--the lovely Christina Ricci.

THIS IS HOW WE EAT! KIMBO SLICE v. TANK ABBOTT COULD STILL HAPPEN

The bad news of last week was the cancellation of the Cage Fury Fighting Championship card featuring a matchup between Internet street fighting auteur Kimbo Slice and over the hill UFC tough guy Tank Abbott. I was looking forward to this fight primarily for being free money--Tank Abbott has won only one of his last 10 fights, a rematch victory over a guy at the shallow end of the MMA talent pool, Wesley "Cabbage" Correira. Basically, any fighter of reasonable skill could destroy him at this point and Kimbo Slice is no joke. First of all, he may be the scariest looking human being on the planet. Click on this link and take a look if you don't believe me. If you've watched any of his street fight videos on YouTube you've no doubt noticed that he's got some pretty impressive skills, and can bring some serious power. He comes in real low, keeps his hands high, throws combinations, and uses punches to set up other punches. Still, despite having an impressive foundation for a fighter I was of the opinion that Kimbo was a joke--at least before I watched his debut fight against former heavyweight champion Ray Mercer.

I knew that Kimbo had been training with Bas Rutten, who's forgotten more about MMA than most men will ever know. My concern, however, is that no matter how much training he received that once he was in a "real" fight he'd revert to his old habits and want to trade punches with Mercer. And you don't need to be Larry Merchant to realize that trading blows with even an over-the-hill former heavyweight champion isn't going to go well for you. So despite my respect for Rutten, I didn't expect much from Kimbo heading into the fight.

It may not have looked like much to the untrained eye--Kimbo bulled Mercer to the cage, dropped him and choked him out--but I was amazed and extremely impressed. Kimbo fought completely opposite of how he would have instinctively and implemented a perfect fight plan to neutralize the skills of a championship level boxer. He bulled Mercer into the cage, kept his hands tied up and kept the spacing too close for him to establish a jab. He pushed him against the cage--and unless you've trained in a cage feeling against your back for the first time is hard to deal with--and started to maul him with forearms and knees. He then took him down and locked in a rear naked choke.

The MMA snobs of the world weren't impressed, but Kimbo could not have shown better in his MMA debut. He basically fought the same way that Randy Couture does--only he doesn't have MMA fanboys swinging from his jock like "The Natural" does. Now I'm a huge fan of Couture, but you have to be blind a bat not to recognize that Kimbo has unlimited potential as an MMA fighter. He's a big scary dude, he's strong as hell and he's got KO power in both fists. More importantly, he's actually LEARNING what Bas Ruten is teaching him and has shown that he can use these tactics in a real fight. Again, its easy to be dismissive of Ray Mercer because he's over the hill but he's not *that* far over the hill--Kimbo rolled into the cage and choked out a former heavyweight champion in under two minutes.

So Kimbo's second fight was supposed to take place against Tank Abbott. Abbott rolled into the cage after Kimbo took care of Mercer and challenged him. At first Kimbo suggested they go right then, the suggestion of which brought a viable look of fear to Abbott's face. The fight was first scheduled for late September then postponed to mid October and then canceled when the CFFC indicated that "an investor had pulled out". That's probably code for "our credit cards are maxed out" but the result was that Kimbo/Tank was off.

That was until yesterday when the California based Palace FC stepped forward. Reports are that they're working on a deal as we speak to add Kimbo v. Tank to their 10/18 card. If you want to make some free money here's what you do--find some UFC marks who should be willing to take the Tank side of the wager at even money and then watch as Kimbo overwhelms him. There's a reason that Kimbo is -400 or thereabouts at the various offshore sportsbooks, but for whatever reason there's a lot of people that still think that Tank Abbott is a real tough SOB and you should be able to take some money from them. You can read the full story about the resurrection of Tank v. Kimbo at Sherdog, or you can read a lengthy post I did about Kimbo Slice's MMA prospects here.

PACQUIAO/BARERRA II TO REPLAY ON HBO THIS SATURDAY:

HBO will be showing the replay of last Saturday's rematch between Manny Pacquiao and Marco Antonio Barrera on "World Championship Boxing" this Saturday night and its well worth watching. "PacMan" didn't look as sharp as he usually does, but won a unanimous decision victory over Mexican badass Barerra. While Pacquaio's usually frenetic workrate overwhelmed Barerra the first time around, he looked a little slower on Saturday and appeared to be having problems with the accuracy of his punches. This allowed Barerra to stay in the fight since he's just a tough SOB and stood there and ate a lot of Pacquaio's best shots. All in all, it was a very entertaining fight and well worth watching.

That's it for now...we'll be back to our usual Tuesday posting next week and for the latest news and commentary on boxing and MMA check out ProphetFighting.com