Issue 036

April 2008

Once one of the greatest fighters and biggest stars in the sport, it can be painful watching the 38-year-old Kazushi Sakuraba these days. Age, injuries and several years of beatings from bigger, stronger opponents have taken their toll on one of the most beloved fighters in MMA history. 

Plenty of his most loyal and admiring fans have been calling for his retirement since as far back as 2003. Sadly Sakuraba, who once joked of his desire to die in the ring, shows no sign of hanging up the gloves anytime soon, preferring instead to carry on fighting as a slower, visibly broken-down shadow of his former self.

A quick glance at his recent record and it looks as if he’s going through a late-career renaissance, although a proper look reveals a more worrying picture. Since a traumatic, blood-soaked and face-rearranging beating at the hands of Ricardo Arona in June 2005, Sakuraba has gone 6-1 with one No Contest. And even that defeat, to Royce Gracie, should have been voided thanks to Gracie’s positive post-fight steroid test. But a gaping loophole in the California State Athletic Commission’s (CSAC) rules allowed the Brazilian to keep his tainted win. Sakuraba has won five of those six fights with submissions, so perhaps some of the old magic really is still there. The fact he can still win fights must be a factor in his lingering on in the sport.

At least the Arona annihilation seemed to prompt a change in the way Sakuraba is matched up. Gone are the days when he was constantly in there with bigger, younger, elite fighters. Instead, his final two fights for Pride, and his subsequent six outings for K-1 HERO’s have generally been more considered, intelligent pieces of matchmaking. But even then, things don’t look particularly rosy on closer examination.

Four months after the Arona fight, Sakuraba faced Ken Shamrock. Yes, Shamrock was bigger, but he was also older, slower, less talented and a decade past his prime. Sakuraba knocked him out early with a harmless-looking punch, one of just two stoppage wins in his 11-year fighting career. Shamrock complained but the punch briefly knocked him senseless and he turned away, unable to offer any resistance or defense. It was a prompt, fair stoppage. Nine weeks later, Sakuraba was back in the ring on New Year’s Eve facing another Japanese entertainer-cum-fighter, Ikuhisa Minowa. The ending was vintage Sakuraba, a nasty kimura with Minowa trapped in the corner, his arm wrenched back at a horrifying angle, but the fight itself was a major disappointment. Almost unbearably methodical and slow-paced, it was as if every movement was causing Sakuraba’s battered body serious pain and discomfort.

Sakuraba’s reasons for leaving Pride FC have never been fully explained. Money had something to do with it (usual when a fighter jumps ship) but he seemed genuinely sorry to leave behind the promotion he helped to build, even as he made his shocking appearance at a K-1 event in early 2006 to announce his defection. His K-1 HERO’s debut in August 2006 was a complete fiasco. Absorbing such a beating, on top of so many others, really should have been the end for Sakuraba. But, as depleted as his name value is these days, he remains one of the nation’s few genuine MMA superstars. 

With K-1 so reliant on pulling in TV ratings to keep advertisers happy, they were more than eager to get him back in the ring, indecently eager when you consider Sakuraba was hospitalized in the autumn of 2006 with a barely-explained head injury after collapsing in training. Not serious enough to require anything longer than a few weeks' rest, it still provided Sakuraba’s fans with some very uneasy days and mixed feelings on his next in-ring appearance.

If K-1 is all about pulling in the casual audience to boost TV ratings then New Year’s Eve is ten times that, a night where Japanese families gather together and watch singing, dancing, comedy, variety shows and in recent years, fighting. On the last day of 2006 Sakuraba faced rising superstar Yoshihiro Akiyama, a big star in Japan with an excellent judo pedigree and potentially a megastar in his native South Korea where so many of K-1’s expansion plans were based. The veteran taking on the upstart is a classic story and was just too tempting for the promotion, but with Akiyama fresh off a thrilling win over Melvin Manhoef this looked like yet another ill-considered fight. It was. 

Sakuraba simply couldn’t take the slippery Akiyama down and in the closing moments absorbed a beating when yet again the referee failed to stop things in a timely way. But Sakuraba complained loudly about Akiyama being slippery in a very literal way. The younger man had greased his legs before the fight. After a few days of arguments and confusion, the fight was declared a no-contest and Akiyama was suspended by K-1. He was back within a year, while Sakuraba was back in the ring just over ten weeks later. This time an unknown European opponent gave him less trouble and Sakuraba took just 86 seconds to finish Yurij Kiseliov with a triangle-armbar, the third-quickest win of his career.

Just a month later, Sakuraba almost fought Wanderlei Silva for a potentially ruinous fourth time. Brought back as a surprise on Dream Stage Entertainment’s farewell Pride FC show after Zuffa had announced their soon-to-be disastrous takeover, Sakuraba agreed to face Silva, completely unadvertised, at just a couple of days notice. But with Silva not medically cleared after his crushing KO defeat at the fists of Dan Henderson in February, the fight never took place. Instead, Sakuraba gave a tearful farewell speech to Pride FC’s fans. 

In June 2007 Sakuraba finally made his international debut with a rematch against Royce Gracie. After a few tense weeks where the chaotic K-1 ‘Dynamite!!’ event looked like it would fall apart (and amid rumors Sakuraba would have trouble being licensed by the ultra-strict CSAC) everything went ahead more or less as planned. The crowd gave Sakuraba a warm welcome in the cavernous Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Probably the only fight Sakuraba will ever have outside Japan, it was sadly anticlimactic. While seeing the pair of them in the ring again seven years after their legendary 90-minute battle was a nostalgic and atmospheric treat, the fight delivered little. Gracie was unwilling to do anything of substance and Sakuraba seemed unable to press the action. Almost any other two fighters in the world would have been booed out of the arena, city and quite possibly the state of California. Gracie clearly took the decision in a fight that even the kindest might call ‘uneventful’ and then got himself embroiled in his very unlikely steroid scandal.

Sakuraba’s next fight came three months later against another pro-wrestler-turned-fighter. Katsuyori Shibata had seemed destined for real puroresu stardom but, with that business teetering on the edge of utter collapse, he turned to fighting. Sakuraba wasn’t his first opponent but he was by far the best, and Saku predictably armbarred the younger man in the first round. 

Sakuraba’s fourth and final fight of 2007 (and that’s quite the schedule for a man of his age and with such creaking, battered knees) brought him another victory. Again it was a dominating submission win over a former pro wrestler, but this New Year’s Eve battle was against a true pioneer of Japanese MMA. Masakatsu Funaki, also 38 but retired since Rickson Gracie put him to sleep with a choke in 2001, was a co-founder of Pancrase, which pre-dated UFC’s first-ever event by a month. Sakuraba vs Funaki was a dream match for longtime fans of Japanese MMA, but it came several years too late. Had they met anytime between 1999 and 2002 it would have been a huge event, but in 2007 it was something of a disappointment. Sakuraba looked slow and ultra-careful while Funaki appeared to have forgotten most of his formerly impressive submission skills, falling prey to a slowly developing first-round kimura. 

Boxing legend Larry Holmes was once asked why he continued to fight into his late-40s. His attitude was that he still made a lot of money, and since most of the people he fought weren’t any good, he wasn’t really in any danger because he was so talented. If Sakuraba is routinely wheeled out to face people like Gracie, Shibata and Funaki then he can probably carry on for a good few years yet, or at least until the supply of beatable big names dries up. But the likes of Akiyama and even unknown quantities like Smirnovas are a step too far. 

There are really only two genuinely marquee matches left for Sakuraba. One is a grudge match with Kiyoshi Tamura, an old training partner from their pro wrestling days. The other would be the last remaining of the ‘first wave’ of the Gracie clan, and in Japan at least, the biggest star of them all: Rickson Gracie. Tamura simply won’t take the fight unless somebody offers astronomical money. He’s already turned down plenty of lucrative offers to fight the man he used to bully mercilessly in training all those years ago, so the fight will probably never happen. 

A Sakuraba-Rickson fight would have been the perfect ending to a near-decade-long rivalry that helped make Japanese MMA the overwhelming success it was between 2000 and 2004. But Rickson may demand a purse equivalent to the military budget of several developing nations, and after so many rumors, leaks, challenges, teases and supposed negotiations it will most likely never happen. After all, this time it might be better for Sakuraba to just say goodbye to his fans and walk away, rather than waiting for those two enormous fights that never come and facing the prospect of his career ending in a more savage way to an unheralded fighter he’d have utterly dominated just a few years ago. But that was more or less the case two, three and even five years ago. Expect Sakuraba, as battered, and so painfully slow and aged as he is when compared to his spectacular heyday, to stick around for a while yet. Let us hope he doesn’t regret it in the future.

The highs and lows of Kazushi Sakuraba

HIGH: The Gracie Hunter

Sakuraba’s series with various members of the near-mythical Gracie clan produced his most memorable triumphs. Between November 1999 and December 2000, he went 4-0 against the sport’s most famous family. From his domination of Royler to breaking Renzo’s arm in the dying seconds with a kimura, to his epic 90-minute stoppage win over Royce and literal spanking of the late Ryan, this series was among the most memorable highlights of his career.

HIGH: The Great Entertainer

At his peak, Sakuraba was the world’s most entertaining, inventive fighter, both in and out of the ring. His entrances, dressed in a variety of costumes and masks paying tribute to his pro wrestling heroes were pure theatre. Once the bell rang, his cartwheels, flying stomps, usage of his opponent’s

gi (the Royce Gracie fight being the classic example), two-handed Mongolian chops and wry smiles to the camera in the midst of a fight endeared him to millions.

HIGH: Pride FC’s Saviour

Pride FC was born in 1997 as a vehicle for Nobuhiko Takada to face Rickson Gracie in the ultimate battle of Japanese pro wrestling vs Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Sadly for Takada, he took a pasting, and exactly a year later, took another in a pointless rematch. Those early shows lost monstrous amounts of money and the promotion only really took off as Sakuraba’s star rose. Without him as the all-important Japanese superstar who could actually win fights, the promotion would probably have died sometime around 1999. 

LOW: The Axe Murderer

Riding high in early 2001 as Pride FC’s top star, Sakuraba faced a frightening new opponent to determine the first Pride FC ‘middleweight’ champion. Silva destroyed him in a very violent 98 seconds. Their second fight eight months later was far more competitive until the Brazilian escaped a guillotine choke attempt by dumping Sakuraba right on his shoulder, visibly separating it and prompting the doctor to stop the fight. Their third and thankfully final fight ended in five minutes with Sakuraba flat on his back, knocked out cleanly with a hefty one-two combo after ludicrously trying to stand and trade with Silva.

LOW: Bigger, Stronger, Younger

Wildly popular and willing to fight anyone, Sakuraba’s attitude and Pride FC’s often careless matchmaking meant a man who should really have been fighting at 170 pounds (with a little weight-cutting) was instead regularly facing much bigger men, and they took a toll. His fights with Igor Vovchanchyn, Silva, Quinton Jackson, Mirko Cro Cop, Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, and Ricardo Arona all saw him outweighed and taking some real punishment: and likely shortened his career as an elite fighter.

LOW: ‘Brave’ Officiating

Many Japanese fighters have suffered from referees' bravery. Too often, in the unregulated world of Japanese MMA the local hero is allowed to take heavy punishment while the referee gives him all the time in the world to somehow make a miraculous recovery. Sakuraba’s fight with Kestutis Smirnovas was a prime example. The unknown Lithuanian clearly (if briefly) knocked Sakuraba out, but the referee allowed it to go on. Sakuraba’s good fortune in getting tangled up in the ropes allowed him to recover and make a miracle comeback, winning with an armbar. No competent official would have placed a fighter in such genuine danger.