LAS VEGAS – I swear hell must have just frozen over.

Kimbo Slice is in the UFC. More shockingly, perhaps, is that he actually won in the UFC.

Seriously.

The one-time street brawler, who was mocked incessantly for more than a year by Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White, won a unanimous decision over Houston Alexander on Saturday at The Palms.

The elite fighters in the heavyweight division, men like champion Brock Lesnar and contenders Shane Carwin, Cain Velasquez, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Frank Mir, among many others, have nothing to worry about.

Truth is, without denigrating Slice, there are more fighters in the UFC's heavyweight (and light heavyweight) division that he can't beat than there are that he can.

If he never wins another fight, though, it won't matter.

Slice has made his point.

He was classy as White mocked him – "What," White asked at a UFC 90 news conference in 2008, "has Kimbo Slice done other than get 10 million hits on YouTube to be in the UFC?" –

LAS VEGAS – Kimbo Slice, who was mocked relentlessly by Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White for more than a year before joining the company, made his statement Saturday by edging Houston Alexander on Saturday in a unanimous decision at the Palms in "The Ultimate Fighter Finale."

It was hardly a classic and the crowd spent much of the fight booing, hoping for action.

Slice, a backyard brawler who gained notoriety by getting tens of millions of views of his fights on YouTube, won by scores of 29-28 on two cards and 30-27 on the other.

Alexander's strategy was horrendous. A huge puncher who knocked out top light heavyweight Keith Jardine, as well as Alessio Sakara, Alexander appeared intimidated by Slice and circled warily for most of the first two rounds.

Very little action happened in the first round, though Slice took Alexander down and inflicted damage on the ground in the second round. At one stage, Slice, a man known for his striking, went for a rear naked choke.

Paul Williams is the kind of boxer any fight fan should love. He throws more punches than just about anyone alive and he's always eager to fight the best the game has to offer.

You name 'em, he'll fight 'em.

Pound-for-pound kingpin Manny Pacquiao?

"Of course," Williams said. "I would love that fight."

Defensive wizard Floyd Mayweather Jr., the other man with a claim to the world's top spot?

"No doubt," Williams said. "I've let everyone know I would take that one in a heartbeat."

How about bigger guys, such as middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik, super middleweight champion Lucian Bute or even light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson?

Yes, yes and yes.

"I just want to fight the best fights I can get," said Williams, who has a tough match on Saturday when he meets Sergio Martinez in a non-title middleweight bout at Atlantic City's Boardwalk Hall in a bout that will be televised by HBO. "I'm not really a super middleweight and I'm definitely not a light heavyweight, but if my team thought

LAS VEGAS – Matt Mitrione may be forever remembered as "Meathead," the guy who complained that an opponent rattled his brain.

Some of his teammates on "The Ultimate Fighter" dubbed him "The Rat," and held a pool to guess when he would snap mentally.

Mitrione's histrionics were a big part of the recently completed season on Spike TV, but they also obscure the fact that he is a viable prospect who has the size, punching power and athleticism to develop into a top-tier heavyweight.

He'll meet Marcus Jones on Saturday at the Palms Hotel & Casino on the televised portion of "The Ultimate Fighter Finale" on Spike TV, intent on proving he can fight.

Mitrione, who played nine games in the NFL for the New York Giants as a defensive tackle in 2002, concedes he's not a finished product as a mixed martial artist yet.

"I'm a football player doing MMA right now," Mitrione said. "Give me a couple of years and I'll probably be an official MMA guy."

Until he proves he can fight, Mitrione will be the

LAS VEGAS – The quality of the fights was as poor during Season 10 of the reality series, "The Ultimate Fighter," as they have ever been since the show's inception in 2005.

A show which produced world champions like Forrest Griffin, Rashad Evans and Matt Serra has been an unmitigated disaster if the assessment is made on the quality of the fights. QVC offered more compelling programming than some of the fights during the current season, which features heavyweights.

It seemed that it was a weekly occurrence where one, or both, of the fighters would lose his conditioning after a few minutes. They'd then spend the remainder of the bout gasping for breath in the center of the ring, looking like they were in need of an oxygen tank, and quick.

It's hard to understand why professional athletes, with the biggest opportunity of their lives within their grasp, can't come prepared to fight two fast-paced rounds. The fights were weak on a weekly basis and there isn't one that anyone other than

LAS VEGAS – Every season, it seems, Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White makes a variation of the same speech to cast members of the reality series "The Ultimate Fighter."

Something is going wrong in the house, one or more of the fighters are acting up and White appears at the UFC training center and angrily asks the assembled group: "Do you want to be a [expletive] fighter?"

Matt "The Hammer" Hamill heard the speech when he was a contestant on Season 3 of "The Ultimate Fighter." Hamill has demonstrated with his actions that he understood White's message and that he does indeed want to be a fighter.

His lifelong dream has been to wrestle in the Olympics; he came close in 2004, when he was a runner-up in the U.S. Olympic Trials.

He's 33 now, would be nearly 37 at the time of the 2012 Games, and still hasn't fully gotten the idea out of his head.

"Being in the Olympics really means the world to me," Hamill said.

His trainer, Duff Holmes, flashed an impish grin as he

Roy Jones Jr. has long been Bernard Hopkins' nemesis. Jones defeated Hopkins by a wide margin while fighting with a broken hand in 1993, and Hopkins has been more or less desperate to get a rematch ever since.

And when finally the rematch was at hand, Jones went out and scuttled Hopkins' plans yet again.

He got himself knocked out.

Badly.

In the first round.

By a guy, Danny Green, most fans had never heard of in a fight that occurred while the majority of Americans were either plugging away at work or still sleeping.

Hopkins, who won a workmanlike unanimous decision over journeyman Enrique Ornelas Wednesday in Philadelphia in a bout that was broadcast on the cable channel Versus, still hopes to make the fight with Jones. It seems a pipe dream to think anyone would pay much to see that fight now.

One of boxing's most egregious problems has long been having two stars fight separate and less-than-quality opponents on the same night to set up a fight between them at some point down the

The much-anticipated bout between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao is all but set for March 13, a source told Yahoo! Sports.

Mayweather has agreed to terms and promoter Bob Arum is making a trip to Manila, Philippines, to finalize a deal with Pacquiao, the source said.

Las Vegas, Dallas and New Orleans are the front-runners to host the bout, which is expected to become the highest-grossing boxing match in the sport's history.

Pacquiao is the top pound-for-pound fighter in nearly every major ranking, including Yahoo! Sports. Mayweather is No. 2 in most rankings and was No. 1 in nearly all of the polls before he briefly retired in June 2008.

Pacquiao is coming off a 12th-round stoppage of Miguel Cotto on Nov. 14 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, a bout in which he won the World Boxing Organization welterweight championship and erased fears that he is not a legitimate welterweight.

Cotto was a legitimate welterweight in his prime and Pacquiao dominated, knocking him down