By Stoker MacIntosh… The Miami Herald announced today that Kimbo Slice—the exiled MMA fighter who was knocked out cold in one punch by part time fighter Seth Petruzelli last year—is scheduled to make his pro boxing debut sometime this Summer.

Important to note however that this news is coming via boxing promoter Gary Shaw —and quite frankly—if Shaw tells me that the sun is shining, I’m likely to go look for myself. Let’s just say that the man’s credibility has been questioned on more than one occasion.

So according to Shaw, Slice—who’s birth certificate says Kevin Ferguson—will make his heavyweight boxing debut, and it wouldn’t take the great Sherlock Holmes to figure out who his promoter will likely be.

The date, venue and opponent however—have all, as of yet—not been determined.

The Miami Herald was also reporting Thursday that the former street-fighting star is no longer contractually tied to Strikeforce—the San Jose-based organization who purchased Slice’s contract, along with 41 other EliteXC fighter contracts, earlier this year.

So that further opens the door to Shaw, who will undoubtedly keep trying to make some spare change from the Kimbo name.

Coming straight from the horses mouth earlier this year, the Nassau Guardian quoted Slice as saying this: “Boxing is really my first desire. I have a lot of love for it and believe I can do pretty well at it.”

Slice also said, “MMA is somewhat of a project for me. Boxing is one dimensional while there are a lot of dimensions in MMA. I don’t think it would be a hard transition from MMA to stand-up boxing because of my fighting style, he said.”

The MMA knockout of Slice made headlines around the world mainly due to the fighters manufactured stardom by MMA promotion Elite XC—who gambled the farm on a long shot that he would be their version of Mike Tyson.

Now, it seems to me that they had built unsurmountable odds for a guy with zero amateur background or formal training, but as far as my opinion goes, I’m very reluctant to jump on the Kimbo-hater bandwagon.

The stage was set, the curtains were pulled, and Kimbo—a mere mortal—made the best of his grand entrance, the onus for Kimbo’s Box-Office-bomb belongs to Shaw.

Actually, it’s not unlike the biblical proverb regarding the foolish man who built his house upon the sand.

Shaw and Elite XC’s future depended on the weak foundation of a man who’s only claim to fame was his you-tube Internet footage. When Slice fell to the canvas the fate of the organization fell with him.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am a fight fan first and foremost, and I love to see fighters succeed..but once again we are hearing the names of Kimbo and Shaw spoken in the same sentence, and that cant be good for boxing, no matter how you Slice it.

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. Elbert Hubbard
US author (1856 - 1915)

By Long John Silver… Bonjour

If we are true to the most romantic language in the world we would pronounce his name in English as – ‘Reee-Shhhhard Gasquet’. How many times have we wondered that if only we can combine one particular player’s physical ability, with another players’ psychological prowess we would have a multiple slam champion in our hand.

Every time I have watched Safin or Ree-Shard, time and again I have thought ‘Damm, all they need is a little bit of that Lleyton-ness, the vintage bloody-mindedness in ‘em’. I have thought the same thing about their physical ability and how Lleyton would have fared if he had that too.

I fondly remembered my Halloween post last year, Ree-Shard was the Prince

Ree-Shard—never the one to relish pressure but with one of the most artistic game and single-fisted backhands in the game. His eternal disinclination to pressure is highlighted by the fact that he never relished playing in front of his home French crowd (he pulled out last year citing physical reasons, but played a tournament just a week after?).

His Davis Cup meltdowns against the U.S. have been documented very well before. His capacity to hit a tennis ball around incomparably exquisite, is indicated by his legendary two-sets-and-a-break-down comeback against ROD in London SW19 quarterfinal. But those comebacks have been few and far.

There is nothing more frustrating than possessing all the ability in the world, only to watch it go futile because of what goes on between the ears in the head. Being termed ‘Baby-FED’ is hardly justifiable.

The game lost one of its most elegant, brash players, and one of my most favorite players to Cocaine two years before, in the name of Martina Hingis (to this very day, I miss Hingis and her toothy smile and brashness). Here is the problem. Cocaine is not a performance enhancing drug, it never has been.

If anything, using it makes you all ‘woozy’ after a while. That’s the last thing you want to feel at RG when Rafael is drilling hook forehands from outside the doubles alley for clean winners.

Neither is he a doctor operating on your dad or sister after lighting a smoke up in the men’s room at the hospital. That way, you have all the prerogative to say, ‘Mate, he controls my dad’s life…and hence I want him to be not strung over coke in the hospital’. But he isn’t a doctor.

The liberal in me asks, how is it different from prostitution? As unsavory it is, prostitution is considered a crime in our society, but it is a victimless crime. The prostitute gets paid for her work, the perpetrator gets sex is return, no one is injured—victimless crime.

Ree-Shard pulled out of Miami citing a shoulder injury. The fact that he used cocaine is dicey, but the purpose of drug rules is to stop athletes from gaining unfair advantage (steroids?). Tennis is significantly cleaner than baseball or football any day and we intend to keep it that way for a long time.

The magnitude of difference between tennis and baseball is as clear as light and day. Jon Wertheim does the research and reports that tennis has an incredibly stringent threshold for recreational drugs.

The cocaine allowed in your blood level is four times lower for tennis,than if you want to enroll yourself in the U.S. military. The question come down to—is the rule serving the intended purpose. Is this threshold serving the purpose of preventing athletes from gaining an unfair advantage on court?

I definitely do see the other side of the story. Top athletes are expected to be clean. Parents around the world claim ‘I definitely want Gasquet punished because if you don’t punish him for smoking Cocaine, it sends  a message to my kid that its OK to do that’.

I see that and am not insular to athletes owning up to their social responsibilities. Then comes the next question, should tennis even test for recreational drugs? Why bother testing for it, if it’s not performance-enhancing? It only becomes a problem if its divulged, so why test for it in the first place when it does not serve the purpose of the rule?

Where do you draw the line, though; he certainly cannot light a smoke during a tournament, it’s just something to avoid. So you test him just during the tournament?  These drugs stay in the blood for months, you can never clearly determine when it got into his physiological system.

Or should we say, no drug in any form, shape or purpose is allowed? Is that fair?

Tough questions.

There is another thought that Ree-Shard can use the time off to get is career back on track. Make no mistake he is still in the top echelons of the game… but he was destined to be higher—a multiple slam champion which he isn’t, that school of thought says, he is better off with this time to introspect and focus more on what really is important in his career.

There are many sides to this coin, the actual underlying problems have got as much to do with sport, as they are with our societal morals?