I'd kinda gotten jaded with MMA in the early 00s (except Japan, which was a bit harder to get your hands on than the UFC tapes at Blockbuster, back then), after the old UFC regime sold to Zuffa and they started crying about more rules and safety and whatnot. I still watched, but not nearly as frequently, and not with nearly as much interest. Kimbo came along when I was about 21, and he served up the raw and brutal violence that I missed in the UFC. Through constant trawling for new Kimbo backyard fight videos, I started seeing HL vids on YouTube of then current UFC fighters like Anderson Silva (with whom I was already acquainted), Wanderlei (same), orgs like IFL, Cage Rage... He really is the reason I ultimately got back into MMA as a fan full time, and was the reason I figured out how accessible worldwide MMA had become.
He caught a massive amount of shit from the online MMA crowd of the time, in the mid to late 00s, but he was raw ability that might have been great talent, had he not been out of time. If he'd have found MMA prior to the rule changes and the well rounded athletes who made their way to the sport, or if he'd have just been born 5 years later and began training in earnest earlier in his lifetime, he might have been a special fighter (in MMA). He got by on natural ability and natural mentality. Really a shame that BKB found its niche in the US after his death, bc that was his true calling, and he'd have done very well, no doubt would have been the face of the scene, and that scene would have been much bigger than it is with him involved.
