« Friday media flash: The heat-up for UFC 70 | Home | Update on Ed Fishman lawsuit »
Sapp fight canceled from Cage Rage 21
By Zach Arnold | April 20, 2007
Cage Rage has announced the withdrawal of Bob ‘The Beast’ Sapp from Saturday’s ‘Judgement Day’ Card at the Wembley Arena.
Sapp, who was due to return to action after a one-year absence against fellow K-1 veteran Gary ‘The Smiler’ Turner, cited personal reasons for his late exit.
“He is unlikely to be available in London in time to enter the cage,†said Cage Rage officials.
Ever-ready veteran Tank Abbott has replaced the former NFL lineman and will match skills against England’s kickboxing specialist Turner.
The 42-year old former UFC heavyweight contender was due to make his Cage Rage debut last July against Amokrane “Kiane” Sabet but the bout was eventually postponed when the latter was forced out after picking up an injury while training at London Shoot Fighters.
Tank is riding a two-fight losing streak, last tasting victory in 2005 against Wesley Correira at Rumble on the Rock 7.
Meanwhile, Turner will make his first major foray into mixed martial arts having previously sampled the sport domestically in 1999 and registering a 1-0-1 record.
Cage Rage 21 Fight Card:
Main Event
Gary Turner vs. Tank Abbott
Light Heavyweight
Ivan Serati vs. Vitor Belfort
World Light Heavyweight Title
Cyborg vs. James Zikic
Heavyweight Cage Kick Boxing
James McSweeney vs. Michael McDonald
Middleweight
Daijiro Matsui vs. Mark Weir
Middleweight
Murilo Rua vs. Alex Reid
Light Heavyweight
Roman Webber vs. Mark Epstein
British Welterweight Title
Paul Kelly vs. Paul Daley
Welterweight
Ross Pointon vs. Abdul Mohammed
Light Heavyweight
Cyrille Diabate vs. Ryan Robinson
Featherweight
Alex Owen vs. Brad Pickett
Middleweight
Xavier Foupa Pokam vs. Tom Watson
Middleweight
James E Nicoll vs. Damien Riccio
Topics: Mark Pickering, Media, MMA, UK | 13 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Im looking forward to watching Matsui. Disappointed Sapp is off the card and replaced with Tank. Cage Rage seems to have late changes to the card all the time.
Pretty decent card, few good names on there. Come on Cage Rage!
As this isn’t the first time Sapp does this, I think he’ll find it difficult to get bookings from here on unless he can provide some really legitimate reasons for his decision.
There is something fishy about this Cage Rage thing. My gut tellsme that they knew about Bob Sapp more then just yesterday. And honestly, I thought the last WEC event was better on paper then this event.
You can watch the entire Cage Rage 21 card live and for free on ProElite.com — go here to register: http://www.proelite.com/r/live and then tune in Saturday, April 21st at 10am PST/1pm EST — login 30 minutes early to make sure your system requirements are good to go. Enjoy!
45huddle
probably because cagerage has links jamaican yardie gangs and soccer hooliganism. Good thing the UFC will come in there be a clean perfectly run org with tons of heat.
Better Tank than Warpath.
“probably because cagerage has links jamaican yardie gangs and soccer hooliganism. Good thing the UFC will come in there be a clean perfectly run org with tons of heat.”
Can you tell me more about this?
According to Meltzer, it is K-1 that prevented Sapp from fighting. Since Cage Rage and K-1 are both part of the Pro-Elite alliance, Cage Rage thought that K-1 was ok with their use of Sapp. It turns out that they are not.
So Cage Rage lied to it’s fans as to the reason for Sapp not being there. If I was a ticket holder of that event, I would be pissed.
How could cage Rage of not cleared the Sapp issue with K-1 long before 2 days before the event. I think they must of known earlier and kept it quiet.
Because when the UFC date-crashes your event with Cro Cop, Arlovski and Bisping headlining, and all you’ve got to couner it without Bob Sapp are Tank Abbott, Vitor Belfort and Ross Pointon, you need to keep it quiet for as long as possible to make sure people still either choose to come to your live show or watch it on Sky Sports rather than shell out for the UFC PPV.
It’s interesting, because I directly asked Dave O’Donnell when Cage Rage joined “The Alliance” whether there would be issues with K-1 over using Sapp. It seems like they generally didn’t think K-1 would mind letting Sapp fight (which, as a weapon in the broader fight against the UFC, you would think to be a wise idea), but I guess the bad blood or lawsuit is too much – that, or Sapp is going to fight at Dynamite!! and they want to save his “big return” for that show.
When the Holland scandal happened last year with Sapp, the person K-1 targeted in public was DSE lawyer Michael Connette. They claimed that he was trying to get Sapp to screw around with the terms of the contract to face Ernesto Hoost. DSE denied the association in public, but Connette showed up with Sapp publicly at press conferences. When we interviewed Ed Fishman about the now ‘infamous’ hotel room meeting on 2/25 (the day after the 2/24 Vegas show) where Ed claimed Sakakibara asked him to rip up his PRIDE contract, Ed specifically said that Connette was at the meeting.
So, if Connette is the one shopping Sapp around, you can see why K-1 would want none of it being associated with any of their allies.