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. 

(In the animal kingdom, playing dead can be considered an intelligent defense. In an MMA fight, not so much. Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

Yesterday’s event may have been low on spectacle, but DREAM plans to come back strong for their next show. Here’s what’s on the card for DREAM.11 (October 6th, Yokohama):

— The long-awaited rubber-match between Shinya Aoki and Joachim Hansen. The two top-ten lightweights first met at PRIDE Shockwave 2006, where Aoki took out Hellboy via gogoplata. But Hansen got revenge last July, scoring a brutal TKO over Aoki at DREAM’s lightweight GP finals. Hansen has been inactive since that fight, while Aoki has gone 4-1, earning victories over Eddie Alvarez and Vitor Ribeiro, with his only loss to Hayato Sakurai in an ill-advised welterweight match.