Bob Sapp

After years of watching Bob Sapp fight in Pride, K-1, and now Dream, I always assumed his pre-fight preparation involved weightlifting, a little bit of stairmaster while flipping through a copy of Self magazine, and a nightly regimen of practicing scary faces in the bathroom mirror.  But this video would have me believe that he's actually in the gym training MMA moves in advance of his Super Hulk tournament bout against Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou on October 6.  By training, really I mean he's throwing extremely slow strikes in between exhausted gulps of air.  But like the really fat people you see plodding their way through a slow motion workout at the gym, at least he's in there doing something, right? 

To give Sapp the benefit of the doubt, it's possible that this video was shot near the end of a grueling training session, and that's why the act of throwing ten consecutive kicks seems as though it might make his lungs explode.  Or it could just be that Sapp's body isn't made for prolonged periods of activity, and no amount of encouragement from Antonio McKee is going to change that.  Good thing he's got that acting career to fall back on. 

(Sapp gets embarrassed by Ikuhisa Minowa at the DREAM Super Hulk Tournament's opening round in May.)

With Gegard Mousasi out of DREAM's freaky-deaky Super Hulk tournament due to a Fedor-related shoulder injury, DREAM went back to the well to find a replacement. Unsurprisingly, they're bringing back Bob Sapp to take on Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou in the GP's second round, which goes down at DREAM.11 (October 6th, Yokohama, broadcast in North America on HDNet). During the Super Hulk quarterfinals at DREAM.9, Sokoudjou snapped a two-fight losing skid by wrecking Jan Nortje, while Bob Sapp got leglocked by Minowaman. The following month, Sapp tapped to strikes against Bobby Lashley at "Ultimate Chaos."

Tangling with Sokoudjou could bring Sapp yet another painful loss, and incredibly, he has a kickboxing match in Hong Kong scheduled for the next day, and may have another MMA fight slated for the next week in Texas. Said Sapp:

(Props: Sav Sci Blog via Fightlinker)

MMA's most notorious steroid abuser is going to be juuuuuuust fine. On August 9th, just three weeks after testing positive for steroids for the third time in his career, and destroying Affliction's MMA promotion, Josh Barnett was back in Japan for Antonio Inoki's IGF Genome 9 show, where he performed in a tag-team wrestling performance with three other larger-than-life figures: Bob Sapp, Yoshihiro Takayama, and Naoya Ogawa. Part one is above; part two is after the jump. I'm not a connoisseur of puroresu by any means, but even I know that the Ogawa/Takayama sequence at the 3:12-4:57 mark is some garbage-ass shit. How much did your dignity cost, Josh?

Behold, the trailer for Blood and Bone, which co-stars Kimbo Slice, Gina Carano, and Bob Sapp. According to ScreenJunkies, "The film tells the story of Isiah Bone, a man fresh out of prison who enters the Los Angeles underground street fighting scene in order to bring down a local mob boss because God told him to." Let the Oscar buzz begin...

(Bobby Lashley vs. Bob Sapp. Props to MMA Scraps.)

We were promised a train-wreck -- what we got was slower and far less dramatic. (An ice-cream truck crashing into a tree, maybe?) Bobby Lashley got down to business right away in his main event fight with Bob Sapp at last night's "Ultimate Chaos" show in Biloxi, taking the Beast down immediately and working some steady ground-and-pound in half-guard for a couple minutes, until Sapp tapped from the abuse. Unfortunately the ref didn't see it, so Lashley was forced to beat on the helpless 322-pounder some more until a second tap finally caught the ref's attention. Lashley moves to 4-0 in his budding MMA career, and plans to fight again in September.

The co-headlining fight looked like it was going to turn out the same way, with Pedro Rizzo quickly establishing top position on Gilbert Yvel and throwing down elbows. But Yvel stayed active, kicked Rizzo off and escaped to his feet. Back to his comfort zone, Yvel unleashed a striking assault that sent Rizzo to the mat, and knocked him out cold with strikes from the top. Yvel increased his record to 35-12, with 30 wins by KO/TKO; after the fight, he confirmed that he'll be facing Paul Buentello at Affliction: Trilogy on August 1st.