This would be one of those classic, only-in-America success stories — a great big lug of a protagonist lifting himself from the depths of despair and unemployment to become a multimillionaire and idol to millions–except for one small detail.
It didn’t happen in America. Couldn’t happen in America. Not for Bob Sapp, anyway.
Sapp thought he had it all when he was chosen by the Bears out of the University of Washington in the third round of the 1997 NFL draft, only to be cut in training camp. He said one of his coaches spread it around that he not only couldn’t grasp the system but couldn’t read the playbook either.
Four years and three NFL teams later, he said, he was so desperate he considered taking a job transporting corpses from the hospital to the morgue for $125 a body; so despondent, he claims, that he covered all the windows of his apartment with black sheets to keep the outside world and his landlord from peeking in.
And now, a mere two years after that, here is Sapp today, “The Beast” in his new incarnation, mesmerizing the Bellagio Hotel crowd Friday night in much the same way he has captivated all of Japan.
The setting was Sapp’s North American “K-1” debut and his big chance to enthrall a U.S. audience with his brute power and boyish charm. Ever the showman, Sapp set the stage at his prefight news conference by brawling with his Hawaiian opponent, Kimo Leopoldo, and didn’t skip a beat Friday.
After peeling off a white feather boa and sprinting into the ring, the 6-foot-5-inch, 375-pound Sapp was knocked down twice in the first round before stalking and finally knocking out his opponent with a sledgehammer move to the back of the head in the second.
Though K-1 is a very legitimate 13-year-old Japan-based league, the scene afterward looked remarkably like pro wrestling as Mike Tyson, a ringside spectator along with Michael Jordan, leaped into the ring, grabbed the microphone and challenged Sapp.
Sapp could not have chosen a more dramatic entree to American soil than this pay-per-view spectacle. But then, Sapp is used to spectacle.
Boundless appeal
Jordan, a new K-1 enthusiast, was among those in awe. “I just came to see the fool who’s fighting him,” Jordan said before the fight. “I can’t believe [Sapp] was with the Bears. He’s like the Michael Jordan of Japan. I heard it’s unbelievable over there.”
Jordan obviously knows whereof he speaks. But Scott Coker, president of K-1 USA, takes it even further.
“The best way I can describe it is that Bob Sapp is a young Muhammad Ali and young Elvis Presley combined, Michael Jordan in his heyday,” Coker said.
Coker is not exaggerating much. Part real-life superhero, part matinee idol, the 29-year-old Sapp has an appeal in his adopted country that seems to know no bounds.
“Everybody knows Bob-O, from babies to old people,” said Japanese journalist Yuri Yamane. “Every day he is somewhere. Every commercial, every poster. I think it’s strange, but young girls yell, `Beast. Beast.'”
Not so violent as Toughman or as hokey–usually–as pro wrestling, K-1 allows all types of hand and foot strikes, though only one knee strike at a time. It also boasts the MTV-type entertainment wrestling fans crave.
Matches are three to five rounds of three minutes each, making them action-packed. The “1” in K-1 means there is only one weight class, and Sapp makes them all look like boys, outweighing his opponents by an average of 100 to 150 pounds.
At last year’s K-1 championship, 74,500 spectators attended, and 30 million more watched on TV. And seemingly all of them fell in love with the NFL washout.
An offensive lineman, Sapp was cut by the Bears in his first training camp; bounced to the Minnesota Vikings, where he was suspended four games for violating the league’s rules against anabolic steroids and then was cut after two seasons and three games; went to the Baltimore Ravens, where he lasted four months; then to the Oakland Raiders, where he developed Achilles’ tendinitis; and finally to the Scottish Claymores of NFL Europe, where he decided he couldn’t keep playing with the pain.
Sapp said he never found the right position in the NFL, and never figured out why people said he was “too aggressive” on offense but never gave him a real shot on defense. And he can’t forget his Bears experience, saying he remembers “dominating Bryan Cox” but that offensive line coach Tony Wise lost faith in him and was “saying really bad things about me, saying I couldn’t read and I couldn’t do all these things.”
Wise, now with the Miami Dolphins, remembers Sapp.
“I never made any kind of comments about reading, but I remember exactly what happened,” he said. “He was a tough guy and performed very well when we had shorts on.
“Intelligence was never a question. But some guys adjust and move as things are happening in front of them, and that was a thing he was not great at.”
Unable to even walk up stairs without pain after NFL Europe, Sapp figured he could survive on his savings. He was wrong.
“When I got to Seattle, I got a call from the FBI telling me they were investigating my financial advisers and basically, well, I was broke,” Sapp said. “I probably had $2,300 to my name and I owed $2,000 on the remainder of the lease on my truck. I had them come get the truck and I had $300 left.
“I was really in a depression state. I hung black sheets on my window, buddies put food at my door and I stayed inside, didn’t even answer the phone. I was afraid everyone would laugh at me.”
Fortunately for Sapp, a friend hooked him up with World Championship Wrestling. Unfortunately, before Sapp could establish himself, the WCW went bankrupt.
By mid-2000, broke and considering a mortuary job, Sapp was contacted by the FX cable network, which was familiar with “The Beast” wrestling persona he had created. The offer was to fight William Perry in a Toughman competition.
“Obviously, they had to sell tickets, and they wanted me to do the professional wrestling thing, coming back to Chicago for revenge,” Sapp said. “But the fight was a real boxing match.”
Sapp knocked out the Fridge in the second round, and the next thing he knew, K-1’s creator, Master Kazuyoshi Ishii, was calling, offering to fly him to Las Vegas to watch a competition and then train in Japan.
“They said they were sending a car the next morning, and I thought they were joking,” Sapp said. “They introduced me in the ring that night as a pro wrestler, and nobody clapped. The ironic thing is that they would name that event after me–`Into the Beast.'”
It wasn’t the last odd twist. The NFL has hired him as its ambassador in Japan.
At last year’s Super Bowl, Tampa Bay tackle Warren Sapp, annoyed by all the Japanese reporters asking if he is related to Bob (he isn’t), accused him of trying to capitalize on his name.
“It’s the true power of the phenomenon that has happened to me,” Bob Sapp said, “that he’s upset that my name is brought up at the Super Bowl.”
Charmer outside the ring
Since his first fight in Japan in April 2002, Sapp has made more than 200 television appearances, is the pitchman for everything from pizza to wide-screen TVs to fabric softener to coffee, has had four biographies written, has a retail store in Japan devoted to Sapp-licensed merchandise, and has recorded a rap single called “Sapp Time,” which has sold more than 100,000 copies since March.
He likely will clear more than $3 million this year, most of it endorsement money.
In the ring he is ferocious, powerful, vicious. But out of the ring he is respectful, the consummate gentle giant, expressing concern for opponents he may have hurt, rhapsodizing about his cat on talk shows, and mugging, preening and exhibiting his booming laugh through commercials and comedy skits.
“He is like a beast in the ring, but on TV he is cute, very polite,” Yamane said. “Some people when they become famous, they are different. But everyone likes Bob-O.”
Sapp’s K-1 record is now a modest 7-3, and he admits that with only six months of training before he began, his technique is lacking. Friday night, he primarily relied on chasing his more skilled opponent around the ring, finally clubbing him in the back of the head to knock him out, a move observers thought was illegal..
The Tyson antics certainly helped whip the crowd of 6,000 into a genuine frenzy. “I’ll fight you tonight,” Tyson yelled.
Afterward, Sapp revealed that Tyson and K-1 have been in communication trying to determine what discipline would be used if he were to fight a K-1 competitor.
Relatives re-emerge
But clearly Sapp doesn’t need Tyson.
Recently he learned that in addition to his autographs, his high school yearbook was fetching serious coin on eBay. He claims he can’t touch anything in Japan without it going up for bid, and that obviously has its other price.
“I can’t go anywhere, so I have to eat in private rooms by myself,” Sapp said. “If I want to go to a dance club, I have to rent out the whole club.”
He is still largely a secret in the U.S. and even, to some degree, to his own family. When he was unemployed, Sapp explains, he was embarrassed to tell his family members. Then, when he first started in K-1, he kept his family in the dark because he was afraid they would worry. Now, he says, relatives are hitting him up for cash.
“They’re like, `But we’re family,'” he said. “And I’m like, `You haven’t sent me a Christmas card since I was 6.’ It’s crazy. So I don’t inform them what’s going on in Japan. Let them hear it on their own.”
