On October 4, 2008, a YouTube hall of famer was exposed as a hollow Mixed Martial Artist. (No real MMA skills inside) The “King of Web Brawlers”, Kimbo Slice, who was scheduled to take on 44 year old Ken Shamrock at the beginning of the night, but due to a pre-fight warm-up session that resulted in a head butt requiring 6 stitches, Ken was unable to compete. In steps-up a UFC throwaway named Seth Petruzelli, who disposes of Kimbo in under 15 seconds via TKO, while CBS announcer Gus Johnson screams hysterically, “Oh Slice is in trouble! Rocky! Rocky! Rocky! Rocky is here! Seth Petruzelli!”

So what does this mean? Does it mean Elite XC should push Seth Petruzelli with the same kind of zeal that they’ve promoted Kimbo Slice with? Does it mean a rematch is a must have? Absolutely not, Petruzelli exposed a one-dimensional, overly hyped fighter but with losses to Brad Imes, Matt Hamill and Wilson Gouveia, it’s clear Petruzelli is far from a future champion or big ratings draw.

What it means is that once again, Dana White and the UFC are the smartest promotion in the business. CBS and Elite XC hinged the hopes of their upstart promotion on a marketing machine, in Kimbo Slice. He graced the covers of ESPN magazine and MMA magazines alike, and became the face of their organization as the new “Baddest man on the planet”. The problem is, when the #1 man in your organization is exposed as ‘lackluster” at best, the Promotion suffers as well. For better or worse, you as a business are closely tied to the face that consumers associate with you. It’s marketing 101, and Elite XC has little to no chance of recovering. Aside from Kimbo, the most recognizable and marketable fighter in the organization is Gina Carano, who may be the best female mixed martial artist in the world but as curiosity begins to fade in woman’s MMA, so should her support base.

Elite XC has recently aligned itself with another upstart MMA promotion in, Affliction Clothing. Affliction has put on one pay-per view to date, (overrun with Heavyweights) and has another one on the horizon, on January 24, 2009. Reasons for tuning in to an Affliction PPV, well outside of seeing Fedor Emelianenko (consensus #1 mixed martial artist in the world), and tons of advertisements for cool T-shirts, it’s your typical MMA show. Affliction has hedged its bet on the popularity of their brand within the MMA community, and an unstoppable fighter in Fedor, as the best way to compete within this already over saturated market of promotions. But with a potential fight with UFC everyman Randy Couture looming in the UFC waters for a certain monster payday, Fedor isn’t exactly focused on carrying Affliction to the promise land.

Aware of the potential loss of its corner piece, a deal has been placed on the table with Golden Boy Promotions which would place boxers and mixed martial artists on the same card for future Affliction and Golden Boy Promotions fight cards, but something just feels incestuous about this, and the insinuation that Boxing fans are MMA fans and vice versa.

There is a much simpler way to stabilize a promotion without creating a circus show (Boxers + MMA artists = Barnum & Bailey), or placing all your chips in the middle of the table, betting on a marketable fighter with shortcomings. It’s by placing a face with your promotion that isn’t going to jump ship for a bigger deal, lose in a nationally televised fight against a throwaway fighter, or decide to retire until he can get a better fight in another organization.

Love him or hate him, Dana White is here to stay. He’s the face of the #1 MMA organization, he’s the face of the television show “Ultimate Fighter” (his entrances to the house are beginning to resemble Diddy’s from Making the Band), and he makes his presence known on every MMA pay-per-view and/or press conference, for no other reason but to keep his face as the most recognizable of the brand. It’s gone from Royce Gracie (all but faded from the sport), Tito Ortiz (rivalry w/ Dana White along w/ his latest string of loses has led his departure), Randy Couture (contract dispute placed him on reserve for over a year), Chuck Liddell (latest KO might be end of the Iceman) to Dana White, where the promotion is as popular as ever. Fighters can be passed around from promotion to promotion, but Dana has made it clear that when you think of UFC, he wants you to see his face, whether you like it or not.

The lagging MMA promotions trying to fight for a bigger piece of the pie should take at Dana’s recipe and instead of attempting to cook up their own meal, maybe they ought to just get out a pen and paper and take some notes. Either that, or get used to the Kimbo Slice’s of the sport.