After his win, the handheld camera that had tracked Byrd’s demise follows Slice from the bare-knuckle backyard into a driveway - the lens gets close to Slice, who can be heard thundering, “All day. He just throws brick after fist-shaped brick. Kimbo has no technique, no grace, no ability to protect himself. When a divot above Byrd’s eye was sliced open and dripping crimson, thus abruptly ending the fight two minutes in, Kevin Ferguson became “Kimbo Slice.” The fight itself is less strategic conquest, more brute ballet.
I first saw Ferguson, as did so many, on a website called, where his street fight with “Big D” Byrd - billed as his first - found the bearded, hulking Ferguson turn Byrd’s right ocular cavity into freshly shaved charcuterie. And to many who wouldn’t admit it, he was an icon to those familiar with the early, Miami-based online pornography company Reality Kings, for which Ferguson was a bodyguard and mascot/enforcer. The legend of Kimbo Slice came from a time that was unconquerable.įor many of a certain age, the Bahamian American fighter born Kevin Ferguson was a digital apparition before he was a person. The internet has made the world feel conquerable. It feels like there isn’t anything that we can’t see, find, or know.
