Thread: Petruzelli Received Death Threats

Threatining his wife?, these guys have no business being around the cage. This is obviously the idiots Kimbo has brought with him from his street fighting days.

Man thats crazy. Its bad enough that Seth got death threats but to threaten his wife/family too?

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Posted on Thu, Oct. 09, 2008
Anyway you Slice it, EliteXC event was a sham
BY ARMANDO SALGUERO
CBS is touting its ratings from Saturday night's EliteXC fight card at BankAtlantic Center as something of a coup because the 4.6 million souls who watched helped the network beat a major-league baseball playoff game and a couple of college football telecasts in the ratings category of men ages 18-34.

But don't interpret those numbers to mean EliteXC's show was a success.

Sure, the blood was real and some punches actually landed, but EliteXC on Saturday showed itself incapable of putting on a legitimate sporting event, particularly when the main event ended in 14 seconds.

The card was little more than a curiosity -- which would suggest it was no more interesting than a car wreck.

Consider:

The evening's scheduled main event never took place. Miamian Kevin Ferguson, known to his fans and the Internet as Kimbo Slice, was supposed to meet his toughest foe yet in the person of Ken Shamrock. Shamrock, 44, inexplicably was to be Slice's toughest match to date although he had lost four of his previous five fights. Anyway, Shamrock cut his eye training for the fight on the day of the fight, which raises the question: What was he thinking?

Did Shamrock believe his training so unproductive that a little cramming was necessary?

The point is that Shamrock was forced to back out, which sent EliteXC and CBS scrambling for an alternative. The first idea to solve the problem was, of course, to replace Shamrock with his brother, Frank -- who was supposed to be the broadcast's analyst.

This often happens in sports. Analysts such as Troy Aikman and Kirk Herbstreit often leave their TV jobs on a temporary basis when their former teams have injured quarterbacks and need help.

When that brilliant idea tarnished, EliteXC started searching for other stand-ins before finally settling on some dude named Seth Petruzelli.

Petruzelli, born in Cape Coral and now residing in Orlando, was warming up for his undercard fight when EliteXC officials approached him about fighting Slice instead.

It didn't seem to matter that Petruzelli was no longer in Slice's weight class. It didn't seem to matter that the 8,000 or so folks at the arena would lustily boo being duped.

EliteXC and CBS wanted a fight, even if it meant adding this guy with pink hair whose previous claim to fame was those Internet photos of him in drag. No, seriously.

LIMITATIONS

Anyway, Petruzelli agreed to the fight, but his instructions from the EliteXC people seem hazy. In a radio interview Monday, Petruzelli said he was told he could not take Slice to the ground -- which would be good for Slice, a stand-up brawler who is not proficient on the ground.

This instruction from EliteXC, which has hitched its popularity to Slice and has an interest in Slice succeeding, is akin to Major League Baseball informing teams they must throw only fastballs to New York Yankees hitters. It is, after all, good for the sport when the Yankees win the World Series.

''The promoter kind of hinted to me, and they gave me the money to stand and trade with him,'' Petruzelli told the Monsters in Orlando radio show. ``They didn't want me to take him down, let's just put it that way. It was worth my while to try to stand up and punch with him.''

Is this starting to sound rigged to you?

That perception was personified when EliteXC vice president Jared Shaw began yelling at the referee in the fight's final seconds, alleging Petruzelli used an illegal blow against Slice. In doing so, he showed an obvious bias toward the organization's manufactured star.

That embarrassment was overshadowed, however, when the last-second stand-in, who was outweighed by 30 pounds, knocked out EliteXC's poster child in all of 14 seconds.

DAMAGE CONTROL

Of course, Tuesday and Wednesday were damage control days at EliteXC.

Petruzelli recanted his version of the prefight negotiations, saying he was confused and the story was misunderstood. Shaw also denied any shady dealings that might have ensured a Slice victory. In various interviews, he said everything, of course, was on the up and up.

That didn't seem the case immediately after the fight, when Slice followed the humiliating defeat with the announcement that his after-party was still on.

Talk about setting up a big-money rematch.

''You beat me in front of my family, man, that's messed up,'' Slice said in a postfight news conference in which he took no questions. ``But it's all good. And I got the first black eye of my life.''

At the time, Slice's eye was blowing up as if inflated by helium. But the shiner is nothing compared to the beating EliteXC deserves for that show.


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Originally Posted by DISCO

I hear it's the same for opposing team fans when they walk into any Philly stadium. I tell my girlfriend who's from Philadelphia that I'd wear my Redskins jersey if we ever go see the Eagles play and she just sort of looks at me like I'm stupid. It's the fans. Kimbo's the hometown fav, people don't like seeing their hero beaten. It's natural to expect smack talk... but death threats against a guy and especially against his wife are ridiculous. But what can be done?

I'm not sure what can be done about it outside of the events. But for sure these guys handing out threats next to the cage should not be allowed to accompany Kimbo to his fights.