from mmafanhouse:
I know you've worked closely with Kimbo Slice. When do you think we'll see Kimbo fight again, and will you be in his corner again when he does?
I stopped training Kimbo. I had him six weeks before the last fight (a loss to Seth Petruzelli on October 4), I talked to him about certain things that I didn't like, and he promised never to do it again, and then he started doing it again. If people come to me and ask me to train them, I want them to do what I tell them to do, because that's what they came for. ... Once you start doing different things, you're out. It's not because he got knocked out. This was already in progress long before the fight.
So you basically don't think Kimbo was preparing the right way?
I would rather just leave it like this: Let's say that the Kimbo who came to me at the beginning of training, that wasn't the Kimbo who was at my gym the last time. Six weeks before his last fight, I told him, I want that Kimbo back. Otherwise, you're out. And you know, he started doing differently again. Let's just leave it like that. I don't want to go into all the details. I wish him nothing but the best. Really, I really do.
When was the last time you talked to Kimbo?
After the fight. After the fight I didn't talk to him anymore. It was pretty obvious -- that was the last time. The fight was the last time.
So you don't have a relationship with him anymore, either personally or professionally?
I do with Mike, and I really like Mike, his manager. I'd like to have a manager like that when I was fighting. So I don't want to -- for me, once something is broke, I can't go back. People say, "Bas Rutten only did this for the money." I lost money. I lost money training Kimbo because I had to say no to commentating jobs. ... I trained him together with another guy, because I didn't have time to train him so much, so I gave him half and half. I trained the guy for several weeks for $5,000. That's not big money. So I lost money doing that because I had to say no to commentating jobs.
But it's not about the money. People could say, "Hey, we'll pay you a million dollars." I'm not going to do it. Once I've made my decision, I'm very hard to change.
Do you have an opinion of how good a fighter Kimbo could be?
When Kimbo came in and did everything, he had huge potential. I said that in interviews. He was doing good, he did everything. He was doing good. He was doing really good. But he started to change. If he would have kept on training like he did in the beginning, yeah, I saw a really good future for him.
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