In his first match, the K-1 gave him an easy kill. A wrestler with a [0-0] kickboxing record. Fortunately, wrestlers are not known for putting good snappy punches together and Sapp was never in trouble taking sluggish strikes from Yoshihiro Nakao. Unfortunately, Nakao wouldn't go down. In the first round, Sapp resorted to throwing punches to his prone opponent. In the second, he slammed his forearm into his opponent and again unloaded an illegal punch on his opponent. In the end, Sapp took an easy decision and his opponent became the only fighter to ever attempt fake-wrestling's infamous "drop kick". 

In one night Sapp, improved his record from 7-4 to 10-4 and increased his rounds in the ring from 15 to 23. Nobuaki Kakuda didn't referee any of his matches which helped to reduce the blatant unfairness Sapp enjoyed from 2002 to 2004. Overall, Sapp still put on a sloppy show but did show remarkable improvement. When the techniques seemed to fail him, he did resort to the brawling tactics but later returned something akin to the skills of kickboxing.

2005/09/23

Bob Sapp's next bout was against Hong Man Choi of South Korea. Choi was the 218cm tall monstrosity K-1 had started developing in early 2005. He pummeled 2 flat-footed sumo wrestlers and hugged 79kg Kaennorsing to win the K-1 Seoul 2005. He began doing more and more television appearances. Not as many as Sapp did, but it was clear that the K-1 was using the same formula they used with Sapp and to a lesser extent with Akebono. Pitting the two was a clear move to have one of the K-1 personalities in the Grand Prix.

In the pre-fight comments, Sapp said that he believed that he would win with a first round knockout. After one minute into the second round a completely gassed Sapp didn't have the energy to mount any kind of defense or attack. When techniques failed, Sapp reverted to his clumsy swinging which also failed. The punches that didn't arc through the air mostly landed on Choi's shoulder. Choi for his part was just as tired but managed to slip a knee into a defenseless Sapp to add a 10-8 round to his lead.

2005/12/31

Sapp's last bout of 2005 was against Akio Mori of Japan. This was supposed to be a finesse against brawn matchup and that is what we got. Naturally, Sapp couldn't resist the urge to foul his opponent and unloaded two heavy punches to the back of Mori's head. The second dropped Mori on the canvas.

The time given to Mori to recover from the concussion was more than enough for Sapp to regain his breath and he seized the chance to bullrush his compromised opponent and score a knockdown. Mori beat the count and survived the round. In the next round, the referee helped Mori even the score by giving Sapp an 8-count for wincing in pain, some thing he does in nearly every fight.