Issue 054

September 2009

Who would have thought that a blue-blooded public schoolboy from an elite independent fee-paying boarding school in the English countryside would wind up as a cage fighter in the Ultimate Fighting Championship?  

It was a story missed by most headline writers, sliding under the radar, as James Wilks (who has been living in California having found himself a role in life training US law enforcement) dismantled the over-rated and rather loose-lipped DeMarques Johnson in the welterweight final of TUF 9. He kept it quiet, but Wilks had the most English of educations, attending preparatory school before going on to boarding school at the upper-class Uppingham, where fees are £25,000 a year [about $41,000]. Many of his school friends are now investment bankers, musicians and lawyers. One of them is an opera singer.  

Founded in 1584, Uppingham’s first notable schoolboy was Henry Ferne, who was chaplain to King Charles I, the monarch who was eventually deposed and executed after the first English civil war. Four hundred and something years later, Wilks now rightly takes his place in the UFC as a modern-day unarmed gladiator, with a six-figure contract in the most testing physical arena imaginable. Wilks may not have the skill-set to take the mantle from the likes of Georges St Pierre and may have already reached the big ‘three-oh’ in age, but he certainly possesses the composure that top-level fighters have mastered.  

Some will say he learnt his ‘stiff upper lip’ on the playing fields at school. Indeed, it is often reputed that the backbone of the expansion of the colonial British Empire were England’s Public Schools. They are often regarded as bastions of tradition, and misguidedly more closely associated with Harry Potter rather than ‘parry’ and ‘counter’. There is indeed a tradition of creating hard soldiers, going back to the days of ‘muscular Christianity’. In reality, it is no surprise that Wilks fared well in the TUF house. School had prepared him for it.  

Since his TUF triumph, I spoke to Wilks’ father, Gary, who explained that, as a teenager, young James had been hit in the face by a local thug while out in the street in Uppingham one evening. It was a seminal moment for the young man, who decided he would never allow it to happen again. Quiet chap but, let’s face it, who’d want to be on the wrong side of him?  

“I never thought he would end up as a cage fighter or Ultimate Fighter. But it is a case of ‘still waters running deep’ with James,” explained his father. “He’s a very gentle person, and plans everything he does like a chess game. He’s a very cerebral person, even as a fighter.”  

His father believes that Wilks’ fierce determination and physical prowess comes from his grandfather, Thomas Wilks, a paratrooper who fought in the Arnhem assault in World War II. The fighter’s father insisted that his son had eschewed a career in the military as he was “too much of a free spirit with his own sense of discipline.” Good luck to him. And for those who say Wilks is not English – poppycock!  

TUF 10 a serious wake-up call for Kevin Ferguson  

Kevin Ferguson, 35, could go on to become the star of the next series of The Ultimate Fighter. Yet he has one distinct disadvantage: his alter-ego, Kimbo Slice.  

Kimbo is a throwback in MMA, more akin to the early street fighters, and TUF 10 is going to be some wake-up call. They reckon the tough guy behind the scruffy beard – who has reputedly served ten years in prison and was once a bodyguard for a porn baron – is more of a pussycat, painting his toenails black, and fighting only for his ‘babies’. For the record, they are: Kevin Jr, Kevin II, Kevlar, Kassandra, Kiara and Kevina. I know. Tell me about it. Answers and reasons to that one on a postcard, please.  

His mother, Rosemary Clarke, says the 6’2”, 235lb ‘beast’ is really “a mother’s boy”. “Gentle, kind, easygoing, always sharing with his friends. He’s just a loveable person,” says Mrs Clarke. Yet he was famously dubbed ‘The King of the Web Brawlers’ by Rolling Stone magazine, and many of us have seen his unlicensed fights online.  

Slice’s next chapter is now set – as a cast member of The Ultimate Fighter season 10, currently being filmed in Las Vegas. I’m hearing from insiders that it has the makings of a dramatic series.  

Unquestionably it is a marketing ploy of staggeringly canny proportions by the UFC, yet he has already been a TV headliner, arguably inappropriately miscast. To entrap himself with 15 other heavyweight aspirants in a house with cameras watching his every move, and the bristling team captains in Rampage Jackson and Rashad Evans, is some cocktail. It could be an explosive meeting of egos.  

One of Slice’s motivating factors is his desire to silence the criticism rumbling from Dana White, who last year insisted BJ Penn, at 155lb, would defeat Kimbo. TUF 10 could be a tough one for Kimbo. It will seriously test his mental strength, and if he can come through it his star will rise again. Get knocked out early, and Kimbo Slice will remain the shadowy specters of MMA who never quite made it from the underground to the mainstream.