Kimbo Slice and Bas Rutten were, at one time, considered a match made in heaven. Slice, an internet street fighting legend, needed MMA experience, and Rutten, a former UFC heavyweight champion, had plenty to spare and a noted penchant for teaching the sport.

Their partnership yielded three consecutive victories, including the most watched MMA match up of all time when an estimated 7.3 million people tuned into CBS to watch Slice defeat James Thompson in May of 2008.

But Slice's last fight revealed huge cracks in the relationship between Slice and Rutten. Slice was infamously dropped by Seth Petruzelli just fourteen-seconds into their match up last October. Not long after the loss Rutten revealed that the two had split. Rutten issued blame of the split squarly on Slice's broad shoulders.

"He just turned into a different guy, he didn't need to do the things that I told him to do," Rutten told Fighters Only. "I misjudged him, he turned into a whole different person. I told him a few weeks ago, I had a sit down with him. I told him that he was an asshole and that I have zero respect [for him] and I can't train people that I have no respect for. Can't ever."

Slice, who's since moved on to star in Spike TV's tenth season of their venerable reality show, The Ultimate Fighter, was unaware of Rutten's distain for him telling Fighter's Only that he had "no idea [Rutten] felt that way. Slice maintains that Rutten was a less than stellar instructor and could make a case that Rutten owes him money.

"I guess with him, he pretended to be a friend but he really wasn't." Slice said. "It was just business with him. You pay a guy good money to teach you things and be a good teacher and they take your money, but then they turn round and say ‘I tried to teach you stuff but its not working?' Come on man, you're not a good teacher - so really he owes me some money right? But its all good, we all do what we gotta do."

Rutten responded with the following email:

Hey guys,

I didn't say that he was an asshole, I said that he TURNED into an asshole, I actually told him this also about 5 weeks before the Petruzelli fight, I told him that I thought he turned into a asshole, he said that he didn't realize that and apologized, he did that two more times that day and even called me to say he didn't knew he was doing that. Later I called him an asshole because all of the shit that he took for granted, I also told him that I had no respect for him in our last meeting, but why I said that? I won't even go there.

I never said "I tried to teach you stuff but its not working", I don't say the word "stuff" when I mean skills or technique, I said, I try to teach you skills but you are not listening. Example, all the fights before the last one, he would print out my game plan, well, he didn't need to print out my game plan the last fight he had against Petruzelli, first line in the game plan? "DO NOT rush in!"

The night before Petruzelli I told him to do some heel hook escapes (he was still going to fight Ken at that time), he said he didn't need to do that because it was...