When It Comes to Marketing, He’s a Beast

Bob Sapp never made it as an NFL player, but he is now among the best known -- and best paid -- American celebrities in Japan.

The 6-foot-7, 350-pound former offensive lineman is, to Japanese fight fans, “the Beast.”

Sapp is a headliner for K1 fights, which combine karate, taekwondo and kickboxing, skills he polished in only six months of training before making his debut 14 months ago.

He won by TKO his first time out and by December was packing them in at the Tokyo Dome, where he dominated Ernesto Hoost, a four-time world champion, before a crowd of 74,000.

Now he has his own CD, deals to promote Northwest Airlines and the NFL in Japan, and is a regular on Japanese television, hawking everything from fabric softener to DVD players.

He reportedly will make about $3 million this year and is about two months away from traveling to Las Vegas for an event that K1 organizers hope propels their sport to big paydays in the U.S.

And failing that?

“You have to have a Plan B,” Sapp told Associated Press. “I’m ready to do Hollywood movies.”

Trivia time: On this date in 1992, pole vaulter Sergei Bubka of Ukraine set his record 30th world record by clearing 20 feet, one-half inch. Who’d previously held the record for records?

Golf tab: Lawmakers introduced a bill Wednesday that would bar corporations from taking tax deductions at gender-exclusive clubs.

One of the sponsors, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), said, “We think it’s wrong for corporations to write off big expenditures for entertainment, meetings, and advertising at clubs that keep women out, while they target women’s pocketbooks. There’s nothing new -- men play and women pay.”

Not taking sides here, but where women are excluded, don’t the men both play and pay?

Both squealed: Juan Pablo Montoya and Jeff Gordon swapped cars this week at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s 2.6-mile road course.

Neither’s trip was flawless.

Montoya went out first in Gordon’s Chevy Monte Carlo and promptly missed a turn. Gordon, driving Montoya’s FW24 BMW Williams Formula One car, veered onto the grass.

The biggest difference between cars: the brakes.

Montoya said, “You need a parachute” to stop Gordon’s. But when Gordon touched the brakes on Montoya’s vehicle for the first time, he said, “The blood rushed out of my head.”

Happens to driver-training instructors every day.

Help wanted: Greek men who have fled mandatory military service by living outside the country will be forgiven and allowed to come home if they agree to volunteer during the 2004 Olympics, Greece’s foreign minister announced this week.

And you thought your organization needed volunteers.

Trivia answer: Distance runner Paavo Nurmi of Finland.

And finally: This “fan warning” was part of a recent CBS “Late Show” segment:

“Major League Baseball is now issuing stiffer penalties on crazed fans who run onto the field. Under this new policy, the only shirtless fans allowed on the field are Jennifer Aniston, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and whomever Derek Jeter is dating.”