Bob Sapp

[Guest Nevermortal]

This guy is fricking hillarious. I checked out all his Japanese paraphenalia at Sherdog, and I laughed my ass off. His commercials and the "Sapp Time" video are both wonderfully humorous.

 

How the hell did he get so big in Japan? I can remember him being interviewed on a Thunder once, and then never being used again (but that's WCW for you).

[EL DANDY~! 0]

He's basically the US Godzilla to the Japanese people. He's big, he's black, he's got a great look, and the Japanese people like it. He's been able to build up his popularity in such a short time it's amazing. He can also whoop a WHOLE LOTTA ASS in that ring, and he has the ability, at 6'8" 350 lbs. to do a very nice diving headbutt and a pescado. Why Vince hasn't tried to snag him and turn him into what Mark Henry COULD have been is beyond me. The guy just oozes charisma.

[Guest Nevermortal]

He's basically the US Godzilla to the Japanese people. He's big, he's black, he's got a great look, and the Japanese people like it. He's been able to build up his popularity in such a short time it's amazing. He can also whoop a WHOLE LOTTA ASS in that ring, and he has the ability, at 6'8" 350 lbs. to do a very nice diving headbutt and a pescado. Why Vince hasn't tried to snag him and turn him into what Mark Henry COULD have been is beyond me. The guy just oozes charisma.

I'd love to see Sapp kill HHH.

 

Any chance on him coming to America, or would he make more money in Japan?

[EL DANDY~! 0]

He's currently one of the biggest draws in all of Japan. He has been talking about trying to expand into America, including a MMA event in Las Vegas coming up. that might be a good time to see what he can really do.

[Guest The Son of Sting]

Any chance on him coming to America, or would he make more money in Japan?

 

Sapp himself said he is earning aroung 3 million a year at the moment.

[Guest Joe_G]

That 3 million is definitely a worst case scenario number. When you factor in all the endorsement work he does and his drawing power, I'd wager he's making a lot more than that.

 

He has been getting some pub in the States lately, so Vince could make a play or him, but I doubt we'll ever see Sapp in the WWE.

[Chunk 0]

That 3 million is definitely a worst case scenario number. When you factor in all the endorsement work he does and his drawing power, I'd wager he's making a lot more than that.

 

He has been getting some pub in the States lately, so Vince could make a play or him, but I doubt we'll ever see Sapp in the WWE.

If you were him would you bother even considering an offer from Vince? Hes obviously making enough money, and he would have no guarantee of the sort of career he would have in the WWE. Plus they wouldnt allow him to do any MMA if he had a full time contract.

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

This should answer a few questions. It is generally considered that his popularity started to skyrocket after his two wins over K-1 Legend Ernesto Hoost and his thrashing of then-Pride champ Antonio Rodrigo Noguiera (which he lost).

 

Bob Sapp, from NFL Washup to Marketing Tsunami

 

For much of the past year, Bob Sapp has led the double life of a closet celebrity.

His family thought he was hanging around his college town of Seattle, making ends meet as a personal trainer after tendinitis cut short an unremarkable pro football career.

 

Sapp, 28, let them think that.

 

The truth was too strange for words: How do you tell people that you've reinvented yourself as a wildly popular martial arts superhero in a far-away land? What kind of job description is it to be Japan's favorite gentle giant?

 

"It's very difficult to explain," Sapp told Reuters during a recent visit to Los Angeles. "It can get to be crazy. I never had an idea that this would explode like it has."

 

In less than a year, Sapp has gone from NFL wash-up in America to marketing tsunami in Japan, where his image as a kind-hearted kickboxer is being used to sell everything from alarm clocks and pizza to wide-screen TVs and slot machines.

 

He has a rap CD in Japan, a retail store in the trendy Harajuku section of Tokyo devoted exclusively to Sapp-branded merchandise and a fan base so insanely devoted that the 6-foot-7-inch (200-cm), 375-pound (170-kg) Sapp cannot venture out without bodyguards.

 

Boasting over 200 TV appearances and three biographies, he also has become a favorite target of paparazzi, now vying, he believes, to sneak the money shot Tokyo tabloids crave: Bob Sapp naked. "When I go into a hotel bathroom, I close the door and I lock it," he said.

 

Sapp himself finds it hard to describe his transformation into a Japanese pop culture icon. "It's definitely like Hello Kitty or Pokemon. In America it would be like the Beatles or Elvis," said Sapp, who only recently disclosed to family his new life as a superstar export.

 

And now Hollywood is calling.

 

ENTER THE BEAST

 

Sapp's golden year started when he headed to Japan in April 2002 to compete in K1 competitions, a mixed-martial arts sport featuring elements of karate and kickboxing that draws big audiences in Japan.

 

He won some matches and his tough-guy-with-a-heart-of-gold persona clicked with Japanese fans. Stardom soon followed.

 

Sapp, who clearly enjoys the limelight, believes his popularity started when he won an early match with a devastating knockout but then walked over to make sure that his opponent was OK before celebrating.

 

Sapp has had mixed success in the ring with a fighting style that favors devastating haymakers, pure power over sweet science. In his last match on March 30, Mirko Cro Cop, a high-kicking Croation, knocked Sapp out in the first round.

 

But Sapp is readying a comeback in time for the K1 Grand Prix, a big-money championship in December in Tokyo, and backers say his landslide popularity seems unstoppable.

 

"In Japan, he's a fairly good K1 fighter, but I think his bigger appeal is his personality," said Justin Kubiak, a product manager for Konami Corp., which is producing a video game featuring Sapp's likeness.

 

Sapp's road to gladiatorial celebrity began in pro wrestling -- in his case after he was dropped by the National Football League's Minnesota Vikings and Oakland Raiders.

 

Moving on to the now-defunct WCW, Sapp began developing a persona known as "The Beast," a brutish alter-ego to the genial, real-life Sapp, whose true love is his pet cat.

 

BARRY WHO?

 

The transition was sometimes hard. Sapp still remembers the sting of being dismissed as "a nobody" by Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor after boxing -- and beating -- famed Chicago Bears' lineman William "The Refrigerator" Perry in a stunt match on cable TV.

 

Now, as Sapp tells it, it's the superstar athletes who can find themselves in his long shadow. When baseball's home run king Barry Bonds went to Tokyo, he was surrounded by adoring fans -- who had mistaken him for Bob Sapp.

 

When the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the Super Bowl, the Japanese press corps had one burning question for All-Pro defensive lineman Warren Sapp: What do you think of Bob Sapp? (The two men are not related.)

 

There is a dark side to being suddenly larger than life -- the desperate women in Japan who call offering their daughters, and the angry men who want to kill him.

 

Through it all Sapp has shown a kind of Midas touch for marketing, making more money in a year than he could ever hope to spend. "There's nothing else to buy," he said.

 

When Japan's Sunkus convenience store named a box lunch after Sapp, news of the promotional tie-up sent shares in parent company C&S Co Ltd higher on the Tokyo bourse.

 

Can he work the same magic at the box office?

 

Simon West, who directed "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider," has sent a movie script to Sapp, who sees himself as more of the straight-shooting action hero than the slick heartthrob.

 

"I don't think I'm Kid Romeo," he said.

[Guest razazteca]

Anybody seen the commercials for the K-1 PPV at the Beligio?

[Internet Warfare 0]

not me.

[Guest Jimmy Saint]

The whole Sapp deal does get old.

 

I gotta say he is great fun to watch at first though whether decking K1 legend Hoost with steroid power or dancing to the ring to Madonna songs surronded by hot Japanese dancer girls when he is about to face Mutoh in a wrestling match.

 

I have some japanese K1 videos and the build up to to his fight with shit I can't remember some Japanese fighter. He went to a zoo where he was growling at gorillas and lions. Then he took a poster of the guy he was fighting eat it then started doing an *evil* laugh. Borderline racist but fucking hilarious all the same and he is getting paid well for all that shit.

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

BORDERLINE RACIST??!

 

Sapp knows it, has talked about it, and says he doesn't care, since really, he's exploiting the Japanese rather than the other way around.

[Guest Nevermortal]

From CM Punk's livejournal:

 

I sit in a Kinkos in Japan, its 1am in the mourning, and I just semi main evented at Korakuen hall.

I also just ate an ice cream sammich with Bob Sapps face on it.

Life is good.

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

That's quite possibly the greatest thing I have ever read.

[Guest Jimmy Saint]

I was talking about that one fight not his whole act over there.

[Chunk 0]

From CM Punk's livejournal:

 

I sit in a Kinkos in Japan, its 1am in the mourning, and I just semi main evented at Korakuen hall.

I also just ate an ice cream sammich with Bob Sapps face on it.

Life is good.

where about is that taken from? URL wise?

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

--Bob Sapp appears on the Jay Leno show on 8/11, along with Ben Affleck, to promote the K-1 PPV show on 8/15 from Las Vegas where he faces Kimo.

 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!

 

*MARKS THE FUCK OUT!*

 

WHOOOO HOOOOOO!!!!!!!

 

*does a dance*

 

*humps computer*

 

*does another dance*

 

http://www.livejournal.com/users/cmpunk

 

there's the CM Punk link.

[Chunk 0]

http://www.livejournal.com/users/cmpunk

 

there's the CM Punk link.

thanks.

[Guest Lei Tong]

It's nice that Sapp is promoting K-1 here in the States, especially on a show like Leno's, but I'm afraid of the image K-1 will be giving off when people think of Sapp vs. Kimo as the main event of a card.