I never expected to see this kind of mixed-martial-arts news in the mainstream press. From Bob Sapp, from NFL Washup to Marketing Tsunami:
For much of the past year, Bob Sapp has led the double life of a closet celebrity.His family thought he was hanging around his college town of Seattle, making ends meet as a personal trainer after tendinitis cut short an unremarkable pro football career.
Sapp, 28, let them think that.
The truth was too strange for words: How do you tell people that you’ve reinvented yourself as a wildly popular martial arts superhero in a far-away land? What kind of job description is it to be Japan’s favorite gentle giant?
“It’s very difficult to explain,” Sapp told Reuters during a recent visit to Los Angeles. “It can get to be crazy. I never had an idea that this would explode like it has.”
In less than a year, Sapp has gone from NFL wash-up in America to marketing tsunami in Japan, where his image as a kind-hearted kickboxer is being used to sell everything from alarm clocks and pizza to wide-screen TVs and slot machines.
He has a rap CD in Japan, a retail store in the trendy Harajuku section of Tokyo devoted exclusively to Sapp-branded merchandise and a fan base so insanely devoted that the 6-foot-7-inch (200-cm), 375-pound (170-kg) Sapp cannot venture out without bodyguards.
Boasting over 200 TV appearances and three biographies, he also has become a favorite target of paparazzi, now vying, he believes, to sneak the money shot Tokyo tabloids crave: Bob Sapp naked. “When I go into a hotel bathroom, I close the door and I lock it,” he said.
Sapp himself finds it hard to describe his transformation into a Japanese pop culture icon. “It’s definitely like Hello Kitty or Pokemon. In America it would be like the Beatles or Elvis,” said Sapp, who only recently disclosed to family his new life as a superstar export.
And now Hollywood is calling.