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Nicky
28-12-2004, 18:20
After a long layoff which saw him fight zero times since losing to Ray Sefo under K-1 rules in June, Bob Sapp is back in Japan, and he's back just in time for the biggest one-night television ratings war of the year on New Year's Eve as Sapp will be taking on Jerome LeBanner in a MMA vs. K-1 modified rules fight in one of the biggest matches on K-1's card, as it will go up against a Pride event and the highest rated show of the year on an annual basis in Japan in the Red & White concert all in one night.

Jeremy Wall: What's your current contract status with FEG?

Bob Sapp: Currently right now I have several more fights to go. I don't know at this time how many more fights I have left, but under seven. So it's going to be like three, five, four; something in that range. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I found so much that recently that it's kind of difficult to keep up.

JW: From what I understand, the original plan for New Year's Eve was a rematch with you and Akebono. Why did that fall through?

BS: I don't know. I really don't know why that fell through. I suppose they didn't think they could get the same numbers as the astronomical numbers that were put up last year. I think that would be very difficult to beat, and I think they felt the same thing in doing a rematch.

JW: It seems to me that the rules in your fight against LeBanner really heavily favour LeBanner, with it being kickboxing in the odd numbered rounds. It's obvious that LeBanner is a better striker than you are.

BS: Yeah.

JW: By the time you get to the third round, if you last that long, I think you're going to be gassed and a sitting duck for a LeBanner knockout. Why do you think K-1 would setup the rounds like this to seemingly favour LeBanner?

BS: I don't know if it necessarily favours LeBanner in a sense that I have more MMA experience than LeBanner has.

JW: He's bad on the ground.

BS: Yeah, so I don't know if I necessarily favour him. So when it comes down to distance, I don't think distance ever favours me [laughs]. But one thing that I can say is that I will be going at him full steam ahead, obviously, trying to knock him out in the first round, and whenever you fight all the styles of fighting instead of just staying in one [style], you're going to get these types of questions. But I don't think it favours LeBanner.

JW: What was the deal with you in K-1 back in the spring? It seems like you kind of fell apart with the back-to-back losses to Kazuyuki Fujita in MMA and Ray Sefo in K-1?

BS: Okay. Well, obviously I was going into my fourth or fifth fight in what, two months? Three months? Two or three months. And I was doing a movie, Elektra, which premieres January 14th. So I was filming these Hollywood movies, and immediately after Fujita I had to go back and finish filming, and after I finished filming that in its entirety, unfortunately I had a fever when I fought Ray Sefo. I tried to continue on and fight, but I was bound to get tired. My schedule this year is about five fights, thirteen pro wrestling matches, twenty-four television shows, and there's definitely going to be Hollywood movies.

JW: That's your schedule for 2005?

BS: That's for 2005. So obviously my workload has not discontinued, so it's very interesting that all of these fighters fight one style, they either fight in K-1 or MMA, and they definitely don't do pro wrestling or Hollywood movies. So unfortunately I do everything, and I will continue to do everything because that's what makes me a bigger name.

JW: Yeah. What I find is interesting is that what makes you a star is the amount of media you do, like the TV shows and the commercials and the movies, but that prevents you from training properly, so if you didn't do that stuff, you could train and improve. But if you didn't do that stuff, you wouldn't be such a big star, so you probably would need to train because you might not have anything to train for.

BS: [laughs] There you go. Perfect. That's exactly right. Everyone asks me about this, but I still have to train, right. That's the hardest part. But when I wake up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror and I ask myself, would I like to trade places with Ernesto Hoost or Remy Bonjasky or Jerome LeBanner, and the answer's no. I wouldn't. I wouldn't trade places with anyone. I would definitely like to win my fight, I don't fight to lose. But I am trying and doing my best at everything I do. I don't want to be one-dimensional. So I don't mind getting in and doing MMA. I don't mind getting in and doing stand-up. You never see any of these guys doing these things. More so, you never see any of these guys fight at the frequency that I fight. They fight once or twice a year. There's always the old adage, when I do fight sometimes I fight nobodies or whatever. People tend to forget that Mirko [Filipovic] lost all of his fights the first three years he entered K-1, and may have a tendency to forget that Ernesto Hoost does not fight in MMA.

JW: Do you think K-1 has done a poor job in terms of booking you too frequently, like how one months you're fighting Fujita, then a few weeks later you fight Sefo, and it causes you to get overexposed and it causes you to lose more?

BS: Well, I can understand them having me fight frequently. You've got to remember, that these fighters, if they get enough money, they don't have to work a full time job. Sometimes they have to work a nine-to-five job instead of getting paid to fight, or they just train to fight. They don't have to worry about the frequency they fight. I fought a lot of times this past year. Fujita fought, I mean, once. One fight this year. I'm going on six times, on top of everything else. I can be frustrating when people say that Bob's not a good fighter, and everyone has their opinions, but you're dealing with someone a little bit different. It's different circumstances, you know what I mean?

JW: Yeah I know what you mean. Everyone knows that your media schedule is bigger than anyone else's in mixed martial arts.

BS: Without question, definitely. You're talking to, I would dare say, the only fighter who has a dildo named after him here in Japan.

JW: You're one of the biggest celebrities in Japanese pro wrestling history and MMA history, and I think...

BS: Exactly. I'm the first foreign MVP in history. That beats out everybody in history, period. That beats out Hulk Hogan, The Rock, everybody.

JW: Right, all the way back to Lou Thesz, in terms of being a foreign that's popular in Japan.

BS: Right, and you turn it around and take it even further to the point where in K-1, these guys haven't done any... I mean, I'm doing Hollywood movies now. They want to use my same type of charisma in Hollywood, and you would think that in the United States I would make the perfect bad guy or whatever. In Elektra I play a bad guy named "Stone". I dare say I'm probably going to have three minutes in the movie. That's a lot, you know what I mean? When I do the Bob Sapp comedy here in Japan, the same thing works in the United States. I just did an Adam Sandler movie, and I'm probably in there maybe forty-five minutes. So it's kind of a strange situation, because whatever you think is going to happen, the complete opposite happens by way of which you're thinking. So if you think I'm going to be successful being mean and strong, I'm successful still, but it's because I'm suppose to be very cute and nice and cuddly.

JW: Yeah, old people like you, and you have a large crossover appeal.

BS: It's very interesting.

JW: It's very unique.

BS: There's nothing like it.

JW: I think it's also interesting to look at the Bob Sapp-Akebono rematch that's not going to happen this year, that it would not have drawn such a large rating because it was so big last year...

BS: Oh yeah, that broke records everywhere in the history of the world. Everyone was watching it. The statistics showed it was like seventy-percent of the population.

JW: The rating was like a 43.0.

BS: I guess you take the 43.0 and you have to double it for the population now.

JW: I don't know what the mathematics are for that. I know it was the highest peak rating in K-1 history.

BS: It beat out the NHK show [pauses, people talking in background] Sorry, I'm eating in a restaurant [laughs].

JW: Okay. My opinion is that K-1 has booked Akebono very poorly in terms of putting him in situations where he suffers too many bad losses. Especially with booking him in matches in South Korea and the United States where he loses to fighters who are not stars in Japan. What's your opinion of this?

BS: I think everything gets a little mixed up. I think that if you come in as a beginner... [pauses] if you're going to fight, you're just going to have to fight [laughs]. You're not going to be able to mess around with all of this rules that everyone has, which is what made me special, right. I didn't know anything about fighting; I was in pro wrestling, so when Nogueira, I just gave him the piledriver, you know. When it came down to fighting Ernesto, maybe I'll win, maybe I won't, but I'm going to give it my all. I think what happens when you fight back-to-back, and you're losing so often, people are like, well, because you didn't step to the right and step to the left, you didn't do, you know, you didn't put your knee up... Man, do you know how difficult that is?

JW: I'm sure it's very difficult

BS: Yeah, you know, man, it's almost to me that do you know how difficult it is to do these things? Everyone doesn't give [Akebono] any slack. You're also dealing with an extreme weight difference now. Both me and him are big men, but we're differently structured.

JW: Yeah. He's a big fat guy [laughs].

BS: Yeah.

JW: His cardio isn't bad for a big fat guy like that. To last as long in some fights as he has, I mean.

BS: Right. Yeah, but have you seen the pace that he goes at? He fights slow, which I definitely don't do that [laughs]. I think everybody knows I don't do that.

JW: You're meaning like having boring fights or fights where you don't push forward?

BS: You know, when I fight I usually move forward. Momentum.

JW: Obviously K-1 is a television network product and its business model is based around television ratings, but also ticket sales are certainly important, but they've gone south recently. Last year when they did the Grand Prix Opening Round I think in October, it was at the Osaka Dome. This year in September when they did it, it was at, like... I can't remember the name of the venue, but it was like Korakuen Hall or something. It was something a lot smaller anyway.

BS: What is smaller? It was drastically smaller than what they were accustomed to.

JW: Yeah, it was tons smaller.

BS: You're talking like 40,000 down to like 5,000?

JW: Yeah, I'm talking like 30,000 down to 10,000. Like a third the size.

BS: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

JW: Like when you headlined the Romanex show, the ticket sales were bad for that show. So K-1 shows can draw really high TV ratings but low ticket sales for the same shows. Why do you think that is?

BS: You know, I think really sometimes the curiosity of wanting to see what's going to happen. I think people are now like, I think Bob Sapp's going to fight, and people will say maybe he'll lose, so they'd rather watch on TV. And at the same time, these cards are setup spontaneously, so no one really gets the opportunity to know whether or not they want to go. You won't find out who is on the card until like five or six days before the event.

JW: Yeah that's true. Sometimes one day.

BS: Exactly. If everyone knows whose fighting, they can set their schedules up and go. But you know you just can't do things like that. Living from the United States and going to Japan, there's different customs and everything, but in the United States we would never do that. We would sell a fight three months in advance, and whoever's on the card, whatever, we would start talking about it, the matches; we'd automatically be talking about it. Me and you we know we'd be like, if there's a major heavyweight fight going on, we know where we're gonna see that and we know which friends we're going to go to on that same day that they announce it. We automatically start making plans. It's just like three days before the event and you find out that somebody's fighting, I don't even know if I'm going to go to my friend's house. I didn't take work off. I'm watching CSI or Judge Mathis or Judge Judy or doing something else. It's kinda crazy.

JW: Do you think we'll ever end up seeing Bob Sapp vs. Mike Tyson in K-1?

BS: Well, we came very close to it, but, right now I think that Mike Tyson stuff is definitely not going to happen. I mean anything is possible, but I don't think we're gonna see it anytime soon. When it was announced and we were gonna fight, it was like, 70% going to happen. Now it's like 90% that it's not. [laughs] Or 99%.

JW: Is it that his manager, Shelley Finkel, has decided to try and keep Tyson out of K-1 right now?

BS: There was a host of things going on regarding that fight, some of which a lot of people were saying it doesn't matter that K-1's more difficult, or you know you'll get kicked in the head. He was looking towards boxers like Butterbean, Francois Botha, Vince Phillips, Shannon Briggs, Ray Mercer, and he was looking at these boxers and they weren't having any success. Where he could have more success is of course boxing, because we all know if it's boxing he would probably take my head off. But kickboxing is a little bit different, right? Different forms of combinations can be thrown.

JW: A lot of people feel that the K-1 heavyweight division has gotten stale with K-1 in the '90s being more of finding out who the best fighter was and building stars out of that concept, like Hoost or Hug or whomever. Whereas since you've came along, K-1 has been trying to find the next Bob Sapp and bringing in these huge freakshow guys, but which aren't as charismatic as you and don't have the appeal that you have, and are bringing down the quality of the product. What's your opinion on that?

BS: Well, I can tell you that you are never going to be able to bring in the next Bob Sapp. You can bring in somebody who has their own characteristics, but you will never have the next Bob Sapp. What I did in those first ten months, that's going to be a very difficult act to follow, and I don't think you're ever going to be able to find that. In ten months, I fought ten times, three pro wrestling matches, ten commercials, three-hundred products with my name likeness and image, six stores, two hundred or so television shows and thousands of interviews, spokesperson for Northwest Airlines, and the, what else, and oh the NFL, the rap video and CD, cover of Time Magazine, cover of the Wall Street Journal. I mean, just to name a few, that's not to name the stuff that I've forgot, like 200,000 slot machines, six or so video games. And that was all in the month period. It's crazy. And that doesn't include t-shirts, which increases the number. So I don't think someone is going to be able to get that, because in order to do that, not only do they have to fight a champion in both [K-1 and Pride] like they way I fought Nogueira and Ernesto in that ten month period and sometimes I fought an opponent ten days later in a different arena. As a beginner, not only are you going to have to do that, but also all the pro wrestling and jump up and go deal with your fans. I don't think you're going to see that. I'm positive it's not going to happen. I look at it now and I don't even know how I did it [laughs]. I have friends that are actors and professional athletes that tell me the same thing. They say you know what; just my entertainment stuff alone is enough to carry their careers. Actors tell me they don't even want my fight stuff, they just want my entertainment stuff. They're right. That's just a job all in itself. I could do that only, and be fine. I could do my fighting only, and be fine. I could do my pro wrestling only, and be fine. That's the whole thing. So I mean you're going to have to be able to find a fighter... are they out there? Definitely. Can they do it? Perhaps. I don't think it's going to come the next day, and it's not going to be somebody that you see working out at the gym who can just come jump in the ring for K-1. It's not going to happen. It happened for me, but I think I still should have been playing professional football if my achilles healed perhaps. So of course now I think I could still be playing professional football if I didn't suffer the injury. So I still have my athletic ability and talent, and I still the football player mentality in me.

JW: Well, I think with a lot of these promoters is that they see something that has achieved at the level that Bob Sapp has or that Akebono has, and they want to just duplicate it. Like the way there's a ton of sumos going into MMA right now to copy Akebono's popularity.

BS: Exactly. That all started with Bob Sapp. So they say we can get someone even more popularity if we pick a big guy that's out in Japan because maybe the Japanese haven't seen big guys before, but the Japanese have already seen big guys. Sumo is already popular here. So that's what happened, is that they start to follow, and I guess the saying is that you can't see the forest for the trees. That's kind of what's taking place. The Japanese are used to seeing big guys. They see NFL players. They see tall basketball players down here. They haven't seen anyone come in and fight the way I did, which they shouldn't because most of those guys are all skilled and trained fighters, with fifteen years and not three days experience and jump in with Ernesto Hoost, you know. And wins. One day go with Nogueira and be ready to rock, you know. That's kind of what you're doing.

JW: How long do you see your celebrity status holding at its current level in Japan?

BS: Well, this year was an extremely good year for me for the fact that I have been away from Japan, for what everyone estimated about seven months, filming two movies in the United States. I actually had three of them with the Transporter 2, but that fell through because The Longest Yard ended up taking too much time. I think without question, this status is going to be around for a long, long, many, many years to come. I think it's not driven anymore by just fighting. I've lost fights in a row, and although these losses can be explained, it's just that if they were that bad I would be able to walk the street right now and it wouldn't be the same as when I left. I see absolutely no dip in the Bob Sapp popularity as far as work. Work is less frequent, as I have not signed on with any new commercials, but I got Hollywood movies instead, so you tell me which is better. So it's kinda crazy, and now they wanted me to do television sitcoms in the United States, and things of that nature. So it's all been like, you said, I guess it's kinda like a seesaw. My entertainment goes up, my fighting goes down. My entertainment goes down, my fighting goes up. It's like a seesaw. It's going to be interesting is with this fight is that I have been gone for so long and this is the first time that I haven't had a fight here, with the exception of my eye injury Mirko [Cro Cop] gave me. I've still had to work, but all I had to do was a Hollywood movie. So I get to do my Hollywood movie, and train, and do my Hollywood movie and train, and now I can go back to Japan and fight. This is the only time we've had this kind of schedule, ever. Normal things I have to do are train, entertainment, which means television shows in Japan, commercials, pro wrestling, train, commercials, pro wrestling, television show, interview, that's what it is normally. There's no rest at all. This is the first time that I've had an actual rest. So everyone is really anxious for me to get in the ring, they're like, Bob, you understand this is the first time you've ever had a rest, ever, in the past three years? And even though I granted I didn't really have a rest this year, right, but it's still the best that we've ever come to.

JW: At least you haven't been taking fights on short notice.

BS: Yeah, you know fighting ten days after you fight, because fighting five fights in like three months is crazy, on top of all the pro wrestling I did and the other shows. I mean if I get sick on time during that three month period, my fight is done, and it's just some things that have naturally happened to human beings, just having bad days or whatever. That's bound to hit that fighter, but if that fighter is only fighting once a year, you're never going to see it. But if he was fighting once a month, you would definitely see it, so that's what happened to me.

JW: Generally fighters should be brought up slowly and gain more experience fighting more opponents before they fight the top guys, and you were probably brought along to quick in terms of your skill level.

BS: Right, but let me tell you, I love being in the position where I'm at right now [laughs].

JW: You never get sick of it? You never get sick of the celebrity status?

BS: No. And when I do, it's time to pack it up. When it does slow down, and we all know that it will happen and slow down because that is what happens in life, I will surely say that it's been great, and that I love being in the position where I'm at right now.

redjuh
28-12-2004, 18:43
ja de kassa blijft rinkelen voor die man

Ronald
28-12-2004, 19:06
Hmm... hij heeft dus nog steeds een overvolle agenda. Goed voor hem natuurlijk maar jammer voor de vechtsportfans. Ik zou 'm wel eens willen zien nadat ie zich anderhalf jaar alleen maar op MMA zou toeleggen. Dat zal er dus wel nooit van komen. Van zijn standpunt uit bezien terecht natuurlijk.


You're talking to, I would dare say, the only fighter who has a dildo named after him here in Japan.
Hahaha... iemand die er al een pic van heeft gevonden? :lol:

redjuh
28-12-2004, 20:20
hier heb ik er 1tje

http://www.jeffsgals.com/gallery25/IMG_3819.jpg
bijschrift... dear Bob, all the time you spend in Japan fighting, made me buy this one. it ain't as big as yours, but it gets me there.

your beloved Shaniqua

Justinian
29-12-2004, 11:12
LMAO! Prachtig stukje :thumbs:

Tsuki
29-12-2004, 11:26
dat interview of die foto met het onderschrift ????????????????

Justinian
29-12-2004, 11:31
Dat stukje dat Ronald heeft gequote.