THE PROPHET'S TUESDAY TAPOUT: DRUNKEN BRITS SPECIAL EDITION

by The Prophet, ProphetFighting

Welcome to this week's Tuesday Tapout--this week we're paying tribute to the land of Winston Churchill, David Beckham, bad dental work and topless chicks in newspapers--Great Britain. We'll be previewing British favorite son Ricky Hatton's forthcoming fight against Floyd Mayweather, Jr. And helping us this week is one of Britain's favorite daughters...er...daughters gone bad in the accompanying picture.

Here's the deal--while boxing and MMA doesn't have an off-season per se we're heading into the slow time of the year for fight sport news. There's still some big events on the horizon before the end of the year--none bigger than the December 8th fight between likable but limited Ricky Hatton aka "Hook and Hold Hatton" and unlikable but insanely talented Floyd Mayweather Jr. aka "the pound for pound best in the world". Mayweather did a good job acting like a nice guy during his run on "Dancing With the Stars", but he's one of the biggest pricks in all of sports. That's a shame since his talent and skills are just sick--he's the best defensive boxer I've seen in my lifetime and arguably the best since Willie Pep. Hatton is by all accounts just a real nice guy and of course the MGM Grand Garden Arena will be chock full of drunken Brits anxious to cheer him to victory. The bad news for them is that Mayweather loves being the bad guy and I can't really see a way for Hatton to win this fight. The Hatton proponents suggest that their guy will catch Mayweather and rough him up with his power. The problem is that I've heard the same thing about guys with more one punch KO power like the late Diego Corrales--who Mayweather destroyed--and slicker puncher/boxers like Carlos Baldomir, Jose Luis Castillo and a guy you may have heard of named Oscar De La Hoya.

One thing that pisses me off is this--I've been a professional sports handicapper for 15 years now. One of the reasons people hire me is that I'm as cold as a mortician in my approach to the discipline. I'd give out a play against my grandmother if I was getting enough points and I certainly have no problem going against my favorite team growing up (the Utah Jazz) or my alma mater (the University of South Carolina). I actually don't do any serious boxing handicapping. I rely on a guy who's the best in the business at handicapping the sweet science. I do handicap MMA myself, but for as much as I know about boxing I defer to someone who knows more. Anyway, any time I give out a position on a fight I get fans of the other guy calling me a prick for doing so. Take the De La Hoya/Mayweather fight as an example--Oscar De La Hoya is and always has been one of my favorite fighters. I respect the way he approaches his craft, and I *really* respect how he can still dedicate himself to training and preparing for a fight with a 9 figure ATM balance. And I've always had a grudging respect for guys that chicks think are cute, but that other men don't think is a serious wuss. Think about what you'd do if you had not just a few million in the bank, but a few *hundred* million in the bank. I'd like to think I'd do something productive with my time and money, but I'm not stupid. There's a good chance that I'd lay around naked in bed all day and make everyone else do my bidding as I became a pathetic hybrid of Marlon Brando and Howard Hughes--and that's OLD Las Vegas era crazy Howard Hughes I'm talking about and not young aviator banging hotties like Ava Gardner Howard Hughes. So you've got to have respect for De La Hoya not only for staying productive, but being able to dedicate himself to the training and discipline required of a professional prizefighter. I seriously doubt I could do it...

But I digress...the point is that despite the fact that I consider myself a De La Hoya fan I couldn't financially back him against Mayweather. I told that to anyone who asked, prefacing it as I did here with my admiration for De La Hoya and then justifying with a reasoned analysis of why Mayweather was just too much for him. What I didn't expect is people calling me the most vile of names for what I considered a well thought out analysis of the fight. I have a feeling that the same thing is going to occur with the Hatton/Mayweather fight, and considering that we're talking drunken Brits that are ga ga over Hatton its going to be even worse. I have to maintain my intellectual honesty, however, particularly when it comes to the fight game.

THE PROPHET ON MAYWEATHER/HATTON:

So I'm sorry, drunken Brits....Mayweather is going to destroy Hatton. Hatton is a tough kid, and a likable guy. Were I picking a fighter to hang out with, to cruise chicks with or to down a few brews with Hatton would be the easy choice here. For a boxing match, however, I've got to go with Mayweather. As I noted above, Hatton's nickname is "Hook 'n' Hold" and that's a fairly apt description of his fighting style. He mauls guys for 12 rounds with this technique, and he's tough as nails so he can take it if necessary to dish out his offense.

The problem here is that he's fighting a guy who's seen everything that Hatton brings to the table, only better. I'm not sure that Hatton *can* 'hook n hold' Mayweather...he'll "hook" and Mayweather won't be there. While he's trying to "hold" he'll be counterpunched by the most insane handspeed he's ever faced. And that's something you really can't prepare for--you can bring in a slick boxer to train with but when you step in against Mayweather you'll be facing a fighter slicker and faster than you've ever seen in your life.

A few people have suggested that Mayweather is taking Hatton lightly and this will be his undoing. They point to his run on "Dancing With the Stars" as evidence of this. Not a bad theory on its surface, but it simply won't happen. Despite his many character and personality flaws, Mayweather always trains his ass off. His dismissive attitude toward Hatton is just to sell tickets and PPV buys--he's likely already watched every piece of Hatton video he can get his hands on. And you Hatton fans can dismiss any thought that Mayweather won't be in top shape physically. As I'm sure you all know, boxing rounds are 3 minutes long. Typically there are 12 of them in a championship fight. Most fighters spar 12 3 minute rounds to prepare for a fight. Not Mayweather--he's notorious for sparring sessions where he fights 12 rounds of 12 or 15 minutes each, with a new sparring partner rotating in every 3 minutes. No disrepect to Hatton, who by all accounts takes care of business in his training camp, but he's not going to win a conditioning battle against Mayweather.

So bring it on drunken Brit Hatton fans.....just because you've moved slightly up the food chain from soccer hooliganism doesn't give you the right to dis a serious fightsport journalist such as myself. Like it or not, Hatton isn't beating Mayweather and will be lucky to go the distance.

KIMBO SLICE'S ELITE XC DEBUT THIS WEEKEND

Unlike many of the jock sniffer MMA fan boys who've continued to dis the man, I'm down with Kimbo Slice now. Maybe his amateur fighting background did only consist of YouTube videos with production values somewhere between "BumFights" and amateur porn--assuming he keeps doing what he's done so far he's going to be a force in MMA.

I'll admit when I'm wrong, and I was wrong about Kimbo. Prior to his fight with Ray Mercer I watched his now legendary street fight videos. Even then I was impressed--he showed a lot more technical skills than I expected. He came in real low, kept his hands up, and used punches to set up other punches. I'm not sure if he claims any boxing training in his bio, but there's no way a "street brawler" instinctively fights like that. I figured he'd come out and try to trade punches with Mercer, since based on his fight videos that the way he instinctively has fought all along. That's why I thought Mercer would clean his clock--some basic boxing technique might do the trick in a fight against a rasta nightclub bouncer in a boatyard but not against a former world heavyweight boxing champion like Mercer. It would have gotten him jabbed and counter punched to death (metaphorically, not literally of course). That's what boxers do that street fighters don't, and that's what a guy of Mercer's skill and experience does very well.

So I thought that Mercer was going to kick Kimbo's ass, that Kimbo was a disgrace to serious fighters, and all of that. At the same time, I love a good train wreck so I tuned in to watch Slice v. Mercer as the main event on a horrible PPV put on by a fringe MMA organization. They had some third tier ring announcer that seemed to be simultanously trying to ape legendary boxing announcer Michael Buffer, his n'eer do well brother and head UFC announcer Bruce Buffer, and the #2 boxing announcer "Classy" Jimmy Lennon, Jr. While announcing the first fight he slipped and started to say "now entering the octago-er....cage". Good job, dumbass, since "octagon" is a UFC trademark. Hope you've kept the resume current.....

Now I'd known that Kimbo had been training with a guy named Bas Rutten, who's a veteran MMA fighter and a highly sought after trainer. I'd read an interview where he was gushing about Kimbo's work ethic, saying that he'd never seen anyone train harder. At the time I thought that was just the usual pre-fight hyperbole. Then I watched Kimbo destroy Mercer and literally had to pick my jaw up off the floor.

To the untrained eye it was a sloppy fight, but what the neophyte failed to realize is that Kimbo *made* it a sloppy fight. This was against every instinct he had developed in his fight career to that point--instinctively he would have come up swinging and tried to KO Mercer. Instead he kept the distance between him and his opponent to a minimum. He mauled Mercer with forearms and short punches rather than open himself up with hooks and upper cuts. He used his strength to bull Mercer into the cage--and even experienced fighters who fight in the cage for the first time say that nothing prepares you for the feeling you get the first time you feel it against your back. Kimbo then throws a few more forearms, a few nice Muay Thai knee strikes and takes Mercer down, before locking in a perfect guillotine choke. He even remembered to cinch his legs around his opponents waist for extra leverage.

In short, he fought completely against his natural instinct. He executed a perfect fight plan to neutralize a boxer's advantages. He perfectly mixed in a number of new techniques along the way and closed the show with a textbook choke. He fought a smarter, more tactical fight demonstrating more skill and preparation than at least 60% of the guys you'll see on UFC undercards. If you can't see the potential in that you're nuts. Plus he's got hellacious power in both hands and may be the scariest looking mofo walking the face of the earth.

A lot of times you'll see MMA guys who excel in a particular discipline talk about how they need to become a more "complete" fighter. A judo guy wants to learn BJJ and improve his striking. A wrestler will want to work on boxing, Muay Thai and submissions. So on and so forth. Still, you'll frequently see them reverting to their "base discipline" when they get in an actual fight. That's not surprising, since that's when their instinct kicks in. The best fighters are able to overcome this tendency and implement new techniques effectively. That Kimbo Slice did this so effortlessly after a career of fighting bouncers and longshoremen on YouTube is almost unfathomable.

The point of all of this is that Kimbo Slice makes his debut with the Elite XC organization this Saturday night on Showtime. The main event on this card is also a good one, with KJ Noons fighting former PRIDE competitor Nick Diaz. Diaz won what may have been the "fight of the year" for 2006 and was later suspended since he was stoned on ganja at the time. He should have received a bonus and a special citation for being able to fight like a rabid wolverine under the influence of "hippie lettuce". Noons is an up and coming fighter tabbed the next big thing by many. Top to bottom the entire card looks to be pretty entertaining and you definitely don't want to miss Kimbo's fight. Assuming that he continues to take his training seriously he could end up being the Mike Tyson of MMA.

So if the people you're currently stealing cable from don't get Showtime you've got time to tap into the cable line of someone who does. It'll go Saturday at 10 PM Eastern Time. Here's the promo website for the fight card brought to you by the good folks at Showtime...

Back next week with more MMA and boxing chatter..and if you need a fix before then visit us at ProphetFighting.com