The very strange ending to the Kimbo Slice vs Dada 5000 fight that confounded us all has just been explained, and it makes for a pretty dark story. Apparently, Dada (real name Dhafir Harris) nearly died after the fight when his heart shut down.
Here are the details, via Bleacher Report’s Jeremy Botter:
https://twitter.com/jeremybotter/status/701137492980858881
https://twitter.com/jeremybotter/status/701142492029145088
Dada 5000 and Kimbo were competing as heavyweights, which has a max weight of 265 pounds. That’s exactly what Dada weighed in at, and apparently he had to shed 40 pounds to get there. I can only hope that part of that 40 came off during camp and it wasn’t a cold cut of 40 pounds in the days leading up to the event, but considering his body shut down, anything is possible.
This just goes to show the dangers of mixed martial arts and why fun freakshow fights like this always have the potential to go horribly wrong. MMA isn’t a game. It’s a fight and the purpose is to beat your opponent down so badly they cannot continue to compete. The margin for error isn’t that big and only gets smaller when old, unqualified and out of shape people step into the cage chasing a big payday.
If you’d told me someone was going to have a heart attack after Friday’s Bellator, I’d have expected it to be Ken Shamrock. The fact that there were a couple possibilities from the card goes to prove that Bellator matchmaking needs to change.
