– Kimbo Slice has been making the media rounds as the Ultimate Fighter 10 gets closer to its debut. In a recent interview, Slice was critical of his former mentor, Bas Rutten. Here is what he had to say:
“I guess with him, he pretended to be a friend but he really wasn’t I guess. It was just business with him. You pay a guy good money to teach you things and be a good teacher and they take your money. But then they turn round and say ‘I tried to teach you stuff but its not working’ Come on man, you’re not a good teacher – so really he owes me some money right? But its all good, we all do what we gotta do.”
– Bas Rutten responded to the criticism in a letter to FightersOnly.com, here are some highlights:
“I didn’t say that he was an a**hole, I said that he TURNED into an a**hole, I actually told him this also about 5 weeks before the Petruzelli fight, I told him that I thought he turned into a a**hole, he said that he didn’t realize that and apologized, he did that two more times that day and even called me to say he didn’t knew he was doing that. Later I called him an a**hole because all of the sh** that he took for granted, I also told him that I had no respect for him in our last meeting, but why I said that? I won’t even go there.
Lets say that he made $100,000, I couldn’t train him two times a day so I told my buddy at my gym, Randy Khatami, who’s a great boxing coach and also teaches some basic submissions, that I would take him in the morning, and he would take him at night. Now everybody tells me that I just have to pay my friend a certain amount of money, like a “per hour” deal because it would be better “money wise” for me. But since I believe that a TEAM works together, I just pay him half of what I make. Lets do the math here, 10% of 100,000, is $10,000, that I split in half, so I make $5000 in 5 or 6 weeks. I also told him BEFORE I started training him, that he had to understand that when I had a commentary job, that I had to do that, since this was not a “money making machine for me” (try to live in CA from $5000 in 6 weeks and support a family, haha, I dare you). He and his manager Mike, who’s a great guy, told me they understood that.”
Credit: FightersOnly.com and fiveouncesofpain.com
