Despite earlier reports, Kimo is alive
There were multiple reports springing up earlier that stated that Kimo Leopoldo had died due to a heart attack at 41 years old and it has now been revealed that those reports were false.
Kimo’s attorney Victor Hobbs has since reported to Yahoo! Sports that the claims are false and Leopoldo has not passed away after all.
Kimo was one of the originals on the UFC roster and was made famous after his legendary fight with Royce Gracie at UFC 3. They were paired up in the first round of the tournament and Kimo ended up on the wrong end of a Gracie Jiu Jitsu armbar. Gracie however, was so exhausted after the encounter that he was unable to fight again.
Preventing Gracie from advancing on in the tournament for the chance of claiming his third strait, and what would have been the third of an eventual four UFC tournament titles, Kimo earned much respect as the first to gain any sort of victory over Gracie, even if only a personal one. He was also known for his strong religious beliefs as he even came out for his bout with Gracie with an awkwardly large cross on his back.
Kimo went on to fight for a 12 year career that ended in 2006 with an eventual record of 10-7-1. He fought 5 times for the UFC and fought the likes of Ken Shamrock, Royce Gracie, Kazushi Sakuraba, Dan Severn, Tank Abbot and Patrick Smith throughout his MMA career.
Cory Brady is the managing editor of FiveOuncesOfPain.com, along with being a regular feature writer with Ultimate MMA Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/corybrady
| All posts by Cory Brady
Good to hear he is still alive. Kimo was always fun to watch(except for the fight between him and dan severn). You never knew what Kimo you were going to see, the slgger who almost beat Royce or the BJJ fighter who beat the polar bear( Paul Varlens) in a long fight where he was under the 300lbs Varlens for about 13 min.
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It makes me proud that 5 Oz. didn’t report the story since no credible source was available to verify the situation.
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@Brendhan Conlan, Are you being sarcastic or what?
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No, I’m saying I am legitimately proud to write for a place that didn’t assume the Kimo story was fact just because a dude on the Underground posted something that a bunch of other “news” outlets ran with.
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WTF are you talking about there was a piece posted here about his death that was taken down when the reports came in that it was bullshit.
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Reminds me of a line from a great movie: “I’m not dead yet.”
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Yea right before this came out there was an article on Kimos death Conlan.
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I guess I missed it then. Foot + mouth = me.
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Me too Brendhan. I opened my mouth on another post. I thought I had some breaking news… Guess I was wrong! Glad to see he is alive.
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Glad Kimo is alive and well
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Wait, so you’re saying certain members of the media including someone from this site posted a story about a guy dying without confirming it(sarcasm)? I’m not really mad, we all get stuff wrong at our jobs from time to time.
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It makes you wonder how someone could say something false like this. How is it possible that someone thought that he passed away, when really he didn’t? Maybe they wanted to submit something to the news stations because they pay good money for interesting articles. That’s crazy though, glad to see he is not dead!
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It’s been happening with celebrities lately where a non credible source states that someone died and major news outlets pick up the story and run with it because their not checking facts. I also remember reading about this kid that changed a Wikipedia article to include false info on purpose on something that ended up being falsely reported by major newspapers which was pretty funny.
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I read today that the talking Taco Bell chihuaha was dead. Please, God, let that be a mistake, too. Oh, the humanity. And so soon after Michael Jackson.
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Yea the dog was doing a reinactment of Michael Jackson’s Pepsi commercial and I guess all of his fur caught on fire and he “passed away”. Poor little bugga
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