One of the formative periods in Kevin Ferguson Jr.’s professional fighting journey would work well in a clichéd tale of an unknown underdog taking his first career steps in the darkness of winter mornings.
He spent two years leading up to his debut fight in 2016 driving with a buddy from Enfield to West Hartford for 6 a.m. training sessions at Plus One Defense System, a martial arts school on Tolles Street.
“We drove a Buick, an old metal Buick, and the back windows didn’t roll up,” Ferguson said. “We would drive in the snow – like, cold. The car was old. It [had been] just sitting for years. We bought a couple parts and got it running, and it got us to the gym and back. It did its job.”
You might know what this guy is all about, and not just in a metaphorical sense.
Ferguson’s father is the late Kimbo Slice (birth name Kevin Ferguson), the underground street fighter out of Miami whose brutal videos became an internet fascination and launched a lucrative mainstream career. Slice went on to become one of the top draws in Ultimate Fighting Championship and Bellator MMA. He even acted in several movies, fuzzy YouTube clips to pay-per-view cages to the silver screen.
Ferguson Jr., 26, a lightweight who is on the card for Bellator 207 Friday at Mohegan Sun Arena, is taking a more measured route that included college in San Francisco, where he studied photography, and a couple of years in Connecticut.
Still, at his core, Ferguson Jr. is very much his father’s son. He’s a fighter, always knew he would be. And he goes by “Baby Slice.”
“Looking back on it, it’s kind of amazing to see where he came from … and the impact he had on the world,” Ferguson Jr. said of his dad, who was just 42 when he died with heart failure in 2016. “I just like fighting, man. It’s a sport. I was raised into it. When I’m fighting, that’s like home for me. Nothing compares to that. Most kids, when they’re acting up, the parents put on a cartoon or something. I was watching Roy Jones Jr. and Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali. I had a little DVD player that my dad used to just sit in my lap and I’d watch these guys fight. That’s all I know, studying these guys, and it became natural.”
With a career record of 5-2-1, Kimbo Slice wasn’t the best MMA fighter. He was, however, one of the most important and recognizable with signature gold teeth, gaudy jewelry and a bushy beard. No one intrigued a fan base, the diehards and casuals included, like Kimbo. Baby Slice — gold teeth, jewelry, beard — looks very similar.
Ferguson Jr. was born in Miami, and spent his early childhood years in his father’s native Bahamas. After moving back to Miami, he had opportunities to street fight like his dad, who warned him to stay out of that game and insisted he attend college. Ferguson Jr., born when his father was 18 and his mother, Katrena Lewis, was 17, went to Academy of Art University. There he made a friend who happened to be from Enfield, an eventual roommate whose family offered a place to stay after Ferguson wanted out of Miami in 2014.
Kimbo Slice supported his son’s fighting ambition but wanted him to be refined and safer, not a brawler, and it was with that in mind that Ferguson began training in West Hartford while working as a gas station clerk in Enfield.
Ferguson Jr. is now based in Long Beach, Calif., fighting out of Team Bodyshop MMA. His record is 3-1, having rebounded from a debut loss (five months after his father’s death). He will fight Corey Browning Friday at Mohegan in a show headlined by a heavyweight fight between Matt Mitrione, who played briefly in the NFL with the Giants and Vikings, and Ryan Bader.
Ferguson Jr. isn’t starting from scratch like his father did. He has a trust fund. He has a marketable name. Bellator took him on a multi-stop press tour Wednesday. People know him. He has a stake in Team Kimbo, a company that sponsors fighters and sells Kimbo Slice merchandise.
But the guiding force to the way he’s pursuing a career is his father’s insistence for a more deliberate approach.
“He could have given me whatever, money, a foot in the door,” Ferguson Jr. said. “He was like, ‘Do it on your own, grind, get it on your own.’”
There was no doubt Ferguson Jr. would end up in an octagon, photography passion aside. Every one of his father’s victories — in a back yard or in a ring — was by knockout. Ferguson Jr. is more methodical.
“My dad told me to train, wrestle,” he said. “I’m glad I listened because I’m a well-rounded fighter. Wrestling is the base for MMA. Any fighter who doesn’t have wrestling, you can get beat up. You can be the best stand-up fighter in the world, get to the ground and be a fish out of water.
“A lot of people think it’s easy by just watching on TV. But a lot of guys come into our gym and don’t come back. After a couple days they are like, ‘This is not what I thought it was.’ They thought they could just come in and fight, that it was simple. It is not. It takes a lot of work, a lot of dedication.”
