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Bob Sapp

Tales from the MMA jobber file, #21: We've come a long way on the jobber file, and while the tales will continue, today we have reached the top of the mountain. At one point, he was the biggest draw in all of mixed martial arts. Now, he's indisputably the biggest MMA jobber of all time--by success, by reputation, and by intention. It's Bob "The Beast" Sapp: The king of the jobbers.

Bob Sapp has always been a huge, strong, terrifying man to face, but his career has also always been something of a work of fiction. He was supposed to have an NFL career, but was suspended for steroid abuse and never really came back from it. He was supposed to be a WCW star, but WCW folded into the WWF before he could make his debut. His wrestling connections brought him to the attention of Pride, K-1, and the world of Japanese wrestling--and a giant was born.

Let's get this out of the way: Bob Sapp wasn't very good. He was very -big-, and used that bigness effectively, but he most of his success came down to extremely favorable matchmaking and often out-and-out corruption. During his Pride/Hero's MMA run he went a very impressive-looking 9-2-1--but only three of those victories were against actual MMA fighters, and of those three two were career losers whom he outweighed by 100+ pounds and the third was Kiyoshi Tamura, who gave up closer to 140. His K-1 career was no different, a 10-7 record inflated by knockouts over much smaller men and corruption--his first victory against veteran Cyril Abidi involved a referee allowing him to repeatedly land blows to the back of Abidi's head, and combination referee/K-1 executive Nobuaki Kakuda famously rigged his fights against Ernesto Hoost in broad daylight, allowing Sapp to land illegal blows, giving Sapp time-outs for nonexistent fouls and calling a TKO victory for a brief flurry that had Hoost in no danger whatsoever.

There's no mystery as to why. Sapp was money. At the height of his power they successfully built him into the biggest draw in mixed martial arts--his fight against the sumo Akebono in 2003 was Japan's most-watched fight in 30 years. But eventually the money started running out, the mystique faded, K-1 hit the skids and Pride folded. So Sapp turned to his true passion in life: Jobbing.

I've been using the term 'MMA jobber' to describe fighters with more losses than wins, but Sapp is maybe the only combat sports jobber in the true sense of the term. He's made a business out of intentionally losing--taking fights around the world, letting promoters put his name value up against their prospects, and losing as quickly and painlessly as possible, dropping to the ground after the first couple of punches. At the end of 2007, when his primetime tenure ceased, he was 9-2-1 in MMA and 10-7 in kickboxing: Ten years later, he is 11-20-1 and 12-18, with almost all of those losses coming within two minutes.

Honestly, who can blame him? He never stopped being a professional wrestler, even when he fought for real--the most impressive offensive move of his career is powerbombing Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. When the spotlight faded, he did what every wrestler does: He got paid however he could, and he got home with as few injuries as possible.

And that's Bob Sapp in a nutshell. He wasn't a fighter so much as a moment in time.

Moveset, stats, logic and four attires (Pride: Shockwave 2002 vs Nogueira / Strikeforce: At the Dome vs Nortje / K-1 2002 Grand Prix vs Hoost / NJPW '04). Not particularly high in stats, but punches like a truck and has crazy power.