Kimbo Slice hasn’t been a shining MMA moment

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It has been a tough few days for the image of mixed martial arts.

First, Kimbo Slice was brought to his knees Saturday night in the opening seconds of a nationally televised fight on KCBS. Then he was beaten senseless by a last-hour replacement who was outweighed by 30 pounds.

That pretty much eliminated Slice as one of the great heavyweights in MMA history and turned him into one of the all-time biggest impostors in sports alongside Rosie Ruiz.

And then Wednesday night on the widely popular reality show, ‘The Ultimate Fighter,’ things turned into a drunken version of Jerry Springer.

Two of the fighters who live in the house decided to down a couple bottles of wine. One guy named Junie Browning threw a glass at another fighter and cut his arm and then both drunks thought it would be funny to throw all the patio furniture into the pool, as well as whatever else they could get their paws on. The rest of the guys in the house didn’t think it was so funny and tossed Browning’s clothes into the pool.

That led to some toe-to-toe stare-downs, a few insults, and Browning actually started crying. The next day, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championships, Dana White, showed up and issued some stern warnings but, amazingly, didn’t kick anyone out of the house.

Some who channel-surfed onto Spike TV last night might view this as typical behavior in the down time of an MMA fighter, but it’s really not. In fact, White has been doing his best to push the barroom brawler image out of UFC.

Chris Leben, a TUF graduate who had his own drunken escapades in the first season of of the show, knows what it’s like to give the sport a black eye. Leben, who is scheduled to fight Michael Bisping Oct. 18 in UFC 89 in London, had to back out of his previous scheduled fight with Bisping last summer after being arrested for violating probation on a drunk driving charge.

Leben, who has since cleaned up his act, admits that getting MMA fighters to act like choirboys won’t be easy.

‘Fighters are like strippers,’’ he said. ‘They’re not paying their way through college.’’

-- Dan Arritt