At 24 years old, Kevin Ferguson Jr. isn’t exactly a baby. And he certainly doesn’t look like one. But the Miami native, set to make his professional MMA debut in August with Bellator 160, will always be known as Baby Slice.
The oldest son of the late street fighting legend Kimbo Slice, Ferguson currently has one MMA fight under his belt. The amateur bout, which took place in March, ended in just 83 seconds when Ferguson knocked out his opponent with a flurry of punches.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT_hdEysNuE
Now the art schools grad is about to get paid to throw hands. And while he exhibits some of his dad’s knockout power in the video above, it’s hard to imagine Baby Slice entering the cage with the same fire in his belly that Papa Slice had.
There’s another key distinction between father and son, too, in that Ferguson is getting into MMA because he wants to, while his father fought because it was his only way out of grinding poverty. Kimbo started fighting in backyards, got noticed online, and eventually worked his way up to the UFC. Though his stint with the biggest MMA promotion in the world was brief, he remained a lucrative draw with Bellator before dying last month after being diagnosed with congestive heart failure.
During his career, Slice always said that he fought so that his kids would have a better life than his, And his son did, attending a private high school before heading to art school in San Francisco. Still, he couldn’t stay away from the sport that made his father famous.
“I was always around the fight business and everything, so I saw it and I understood what was going on,” Ferguson told the Associated Press. “I just knew without a doubt that one day, this was what I wanted to do.”