UPDATE: 6/15/19: Bob Sapp's team emailed Fightful a temporary order against Yuki Hayashi, who was not named in our initial, December 2017 report of allegations towards Sapp.
"Sapp's legal and PR Division" included videos of him scolding a reporter and claiming we could be subpoena'd to testify in a potential legal proceeding. He also requested we contact Wikipedia to update his page, and claimed he's in the process of suing Shukan Bunshun for defamation regarding the story.
I should note, Fightful never opened an email from Yuki Hayashi, as it was in Japanese, and nobody on our staff speaks the language, and instead cited a following report. Sapp opened himself up for interviews, requesting three business class plane tickets, hotel accommodations and food.
Sapp's teams have repeatedly addressed many of these e-mails to "Vox legal," although Fightful isn't affiliated with Vox and have notified them of such.
ORIGINAL:
Bob Sapp is a legendary sports figure in the country of Japan, but his image took quite the hit recently.
Shukan Bunshun, a news outlet out of Japan is reporting that Sapp’s longtime girlfriend (who wasn’t named) has accused the fighter of domestic violence.
The unnamed girlfriend of Sapp posted the following images of the injuries she allegedly suffered due to his actions, which you can view by clicking here.
According to reports by Shukan Bunshun, both Sapp and the alleged victim have been in a relationship since 2011 and she has also helped manage parts of his combat sports and entertainment career as well.
This alleged assault happened to the unnamed girlfriend in March of last year, but she waited until now to post the images and speak out on what happened.
Sapp had apparently tried to apologize for his alleged actions via Facebook Messenger, but it is unknown if the apology had been accepted by the victim.
There is no word on how these accusations will affect Sapp’s upcoming sumo match with Yokozuna Asashoryu on New Years Eve. Sapp’s last appearance as an MMA fighter took place at Road FC 32 in July of 2016, suffering a first round TKO loss to Aori Gele.
Fightful will provide more updates on this story as they become available.
