One of the greatest Japanese fighters to ever compete in mixed martial arts, Kazushi Sakuraba will see his son Taisei Sakuraba enter the ring for the first time on Dec. 31, when he makes his MMA debut against 41-fight veteran Yusuke Yachi in a lightweight bout at RIZIN DECADE in Saitama, Japan.
Excited to represent the Sakuraba clan for the first time in the sport after competing a couple of times in grappling matches, “Saku Jr.” looks back at Kazushi’s greatest moments to pick a walkout, not an actual bout, as his favorite moment of Sakuraba’s MMA career.
“My favorite moment is when my father walked out as Mario,” Sakuraba said with a smile during an interview with MMA Fighting. “I don’t remember the fight itself, but I remember that walkout.”
“Saku Jr.” was days away from turning 5 years old when his father walked to the PRIDE ring dressed as Super Mario. “The Gracie Hunter,” who had lost for the third time to Wanderlei Silva months before, scored a third-round armbar victory over Kevin Randleman that night in 2003.
Sakuraba made fame in the sport by beating four members of the Gracie family inside the PRIDE ring, being forever known as “The Gracie Hunter,” and his son said he would be open to facing a Gracie in the future. Kron Gracie, the most popular representative of the family today, is the son of Rickson Gracie. Kron went 3-0 in RIZIN before joining the UFC in 2019, where he’s lost three of four.
“If there’s a demand and if there are people who want to see this fight, I’m down,” Taisei Sakuraba said of facing Kron Gracie.
Taisei’s father is a veteran of 45 MMA bouts but hasn’t competed since 2015 when a loss to Shinya Aoki left the 55-year-old on a five-fight losing skid. “Saku Jr.”, 26, joked that “my father is invincible, so he’s saying that he’s never going to retire,” so they could be part of the same card one day, maybe on a tag-team type of match.
“I’m not so sure about how the RIZIN system is going to work,” Sakuraba said, “but Quintet is a grappling promotion, and that’s a team versus team type concept. It’s only grappling, but I think under Quintet, there’s a high probability of that happening. That would be interesting. But for me, I wanna travel abroad. So I hope, whenever this happens, I hope it happens outside of Japan.”