Monday night at about 1:00am I got a call on my cell phone from a strange number with too many digits. Not being sure who would be calling so late, I didn’t answer. The caller left a voicemail, “Hello, this assistant to Mr. Sakurai, he board airplane now come to USA. He ask you pick up from airport 7am. Okay. Click”
Of course I wasn’t given a flight number or even the airline he was coming in on, but receiving a last minute call the night before he arrives is pretty much par for the course when it comes to Sakurai. Fortunately, there are only a couple flights that come in from Tokyo that come in around that time, so I was able to figure out when which flight he was most likely on and I got there in time to find him waiting for me at baggage claim.
For those of you that don’t know who Sakurai is, do yourself a favor and look up some of his old fights. There was a time that he was considered top 3 in the world pound for pound, and a long stretch of several years where he went undefeated. He eventually lost a fight to Anderson Silva, but it was a good fight and Anderson has obviously turned out to be one of the best himself.
Fast forward to today and much like when he first came to train with us about 5 years ago, Sakurai has not done as well as he should as of late. After a quick KO of Aoki, he’s lost 2 fights in a row, both to opponents he should have been able to beat. In his own words, “Two fights, me no good condition, I need hard training now, next fight I want to win.”
This is the first time in a long that he’s come to train with us without an immediate fight coming up. There has been a lot of talk of him fighting Nick Diaz in Strikeforce, but he hasn’t heard or signed anything so I think at this point it’s purely speculation. In any event, his being here is a good sign that Sakurai is serious about getting his career back on track. When he trains hard, he’s still a very dangerous and well rounded fighter capable of beating just about anyone. When he doesn’t train hard…well just look at his last two fights.
In any event, I’m glad to see my good friend back training with us and am looking forward to helping him get back in shape. He’s about 190lbs right now but the weight will come off him quickly now that he’s training hard again. I’ll be putting up pictures and hopefully some videos in the coming weeks because Sakurai is by far the most entertaining fighter I’ve ever trained and more than half of the funniest stories I have involve him.
Stay tuned….