‘Dada 5000’ and a Mentality Set on Destruction
One of the more unlikely stories in mixed martial arts over the past year involves the rise in popularity of Dhafir Harris. The Florida-based backyard brawler became a Netflix sensation with his “Dawg Fight” documentary -- a gripping account of the life of underground fighters.
Though he has been criticized for allegedly attempting to replicate the path Kevin Ferguson, aka “Kimbo Slice,” took to MMA stardom years ago, Harris claims to be his own man. He believes he should have become a bigger personality sooner and blames Ferguson for holding him back. The two have known one another since they were kids. Harris -- who competes under the nickname “Dada 5000” -- thinks he deserves some of the credit for Ferguson’s jump to EliteXC and Bellator MMA headliner.
Advertisement
“We go all the way back to when we were children,” Harris told Sherdog.com “We all grew up together in Miami. He’s a few years older than me, and he used to always run with my brother. I always had love for him, so when we started the backyard fighting, he started getting his name out there.”
Harris claims he assisted in Ferguson’s preparation for an
exhibition bout with former heavyweight boxing champion Ray Mercer in
2007.
“When he was going to fight Ray Mercer, he told me, ‘Dada, I want you with me. I need people around who I feel comfortable with,’” Harris said. “So I helped him get ready for Mercer, and, of course, he won. I was there as his bodyguard, but when I say bodyguard, I don’t mean that I’m there to protect him from physical harm or danger but a guard to protect his best interests, his assets. Like, if someone came up and tried pushing his buttons or tries to start s--- with him, to get him to the point of putting his hands on them, I’d prevent that. They’d sue him, and he’d lose it all. I intercepted a couple of potential situations and helped bring him to where he was. I proved my worth, but apparently that wasn’t enough.”
Though Harris remains unsure of exactly where their relationship went south, he points to when he started tearing up opponents in his own backyard fights. A rumble of excitement surrounded him. According to Harris, Ferguson was not fond of the attention he received and did everything he could to keep the spotlight trained on himself.
“I’m fighting in the backyard for him, but they’re not showing my footage on any of the videos,” he said. “I asked them when they were going to put my footage up. When I fought that dude Chauncey, everybody was at the house. The car pulled up and he had just gotten out of jail, and I seen the dude put the band around his arm and they injected something inside him. I found out later that it was morphine. I called ‘Kimbo’ and told him what I saw, but he was like, ‘Dada, this is the backyard. This ain’t sanctioned. This ain’t regulated.’ Then I went outside and [expletive] that dude up. I’m hitting this dude with everything but the kitchen sink, but he kept coming. I was hitting him with some clean shots, and one of my punches snapped straight through the wooden fence.
“They never released that footage, but I didn’t stress, I didn’t trip,” Harris added. “I was still on board. All this time, they were setting me up, trying to get me hurt, even though I’m on their team. So I’m thinking that with friends like this, who needs enemies?”
The situation between Harris and Ferguson unraveled from there. When “Dada 5000” decided to part ways with his former running mate, he claims that Ferguson warned him about severing their partnership. Once Harris began earning a name for himself on his own, he says the hard feelings deepened.
“In the backyard, he was the king,” Harris said, “so what’s good for the gander isn’t always good for the goose, I guess. He wanted to be the only one who made it, and he didn’t want the possibility of another ‘Kimbo Slice’ to come around and make it. He didn’t want anybody else to get that opportunity. It’s been proven. Then he started saying things like I want to be him and that I wanted to steal his identity. Come on. Stereotypically, beards [are] something everybody in our community has. There are lots of big, black dudes with beards and tattoos everywhere. This ain’t something new. I didn’t invent black dudes with beards, but I took it farther than anybody else.”
Harris expects fireworks when the two finally collide inside the cage.
“‘Kimbo Slice’ has nice hands, but guess what? I ain’t no slouch, either,” he said. “There is tons of power behind these socket outlets. He knows what I got because after he saw me fight Chauncey, he told me, ‘Dada, we ain’t never gonna show that footage. You punched through the [expletive] wooden gate.’ He ain’t never was going to show it because it would have overshadowed what he was doing.
“Everybody I fought supposedly had better skills, more experience, more talent, but they still got knocked the [expletive] out,” Harris added. “They got ambushed. There was nothing they could have done about it because I’m too big, I’m too massive. My mentality is set on destruction. With me, it doesn’t have to be about technique because I’m so strong. I’ll snap it off anyway.”
Related Articles
