Bob Sapp says he can walk away from the sport
of MMA now that he has "well over 10 million dollars."
Bob Sapp has spent the last several years as a punching bag. Both for opponents and for fans and media members who keyed in on an easy target.
Sapp was once a feared fighter, mostly due to a combination of his intimidating visage and PRIDE's ability to market crazy the right way, but also because he tried to slam Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira through the ring.
Sapp would only go 2-16 in MMA from 2008 onward, including an impressive 12 fight losing streak that saw him last longer than two minutes only twice. Sapp was still being paid considerable amounts of money to continue fighting all over the world, which was obviously motivation enough for not hanging up the gloves.
But he spoke with Submission Radio and shared exactly why it took until now for him to decide to walk away from the sport.
Here's the trascription as provided by Submission Radio, with the audio below:
"Towards the end of my career what ended up happening is I had some large medical bills at that time for being a professional fighter our medical bills we had to get carried by our self which means we are unable to get medical insurance so we had to pay everything in cash so if you get a gash on your eye that’s going to cost you roughly about 7,000 US dollars if you of course have to pay for your trainer and you want to pay for your manager and of course just your normal living expenses if your fighting for about 40,000 dollars after taxes your looking at about 31,000 is what your going to have. Now if your paying your trainer and your manager 10% and then you’ve got to do another 7,000 dollars for a bill just for your fighting that can really really put you in the hole. Now towards the end of my career I had to make a decision should I number 1 help others which means should have I given someone my money to the fighters that came before me and pay some of their medical bills for some of them that had brain damage same thing with some of the pro wrestlers should I also give back to my fans should I allow them to come to some of my fighting events should I then go around the world and make sure I can of course collect revenue and I of course can share my revenue with all of the fans before I do end and that’s exactly what I did. As far as what retired me it’s very simple I have what’s called accountability I have the ability to do my own accounting and when you have well over 10 million dollars there's no longer a need to step into the ring anymore so when your able to do that and follow the great steps of financial gurus such as Dave Ramsey when your able to put that all together with the wisdom and the truth that you encountered through your travels one of which of course is Japan when you combine the two that gives you profitability so now I have the ability to strictly make a profit.
"I no longer have a need to go into the ring for 40,000 for a fight when I’m making well last month it was somewhere in that realm of over 1 million dollars. I don’t need to do that any longer."
Bob Sapp says he spent the end of his career paying off big medical bills, is retiring with 'well over $10 million' - Bloody Elbow
his grind over the years in japan.
