Bas Rutten is the current mixed martial arts trainer for the internet street fighter Kimbo Slice. He was interviewed after the EliteXC "Primetime" event and he admits that the referree should have stopped the fight in the second round in favor of James Thompson. He also goes on to talk about the pros and cons of Kimbo during the fight. He believes Kimbo made some mistakes, but those are the type of mistakes that will help him become a better fighter.
Here’s a snip from Bas Rutten and what he had to say about the fight between Kimbo Slice and James Thompson:
"People ask me if the fight should have been stopped at the end in the
second round, I say YES because those are the rules, it should have
been stopped because Kimbo didn’t do anything to improve his situation.
But I think what made the ref NOT do it was the fact that Kimbo was
giving his thumbs up the whole time to let the referee know that he was
OK. This was the refs decission, not Kimbo’s.
He also didn’t close his guard a few times and he should have done
that. In round two he had James in a guillotine choke but didn’t close
his guard, that was too bad because Thompson escaped exactly how I
showed Kimbo that you should escape when your opponent doesn’t close
his guard, but you learn from your mistakes so that won’t happen again
either.He had Thompson in trouble the first and the second round with his
punches but he got a little bit too “hungry” and kept on hitting which
means that he planted his feet and that means that your opponent can go
for a takedown, and that happened too. But here I go again, you learn
from your mistakes and that won’t happen again."
