Kazushi Sakuraba - TheSportsDB.com

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Name
Kazushi Sakuraba

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60%

Born
1969 (55 years old)

Birth Place

Shōwa, Japan

Position
Fighter

Status
Retired

Ethnicity

Team Number

Height
183 cm

Weight
76 kg

Outfitter

Kit

Side

Agent

Wage Year

Player Cutout

Full Body Render

Sport

Fighting

Team
_Retired Fighting

2nd Team

League
_No League

Creative Commons Artwork
No

Latest Results

					Saraba No Utake	29 Dec 15

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Kazushi Sakuraba (Japanese: 桜庭和志, Sakuraba Kazushi, born July 14, 1969) is a Japanese professional wrestler, submission wrestler and former mixed martial artist, currently signed to Pro Wrestling Noah, where he was formerly one-half of the former GHC Tag Team Champions with Takashi Sugiura. He has also competed in traditional puroresu for New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) and shoot-style competition for UWFi and Kingdom Pro Wrestling (KPW). He has fought in MMA competition in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Pride Fighting Championships, Hero's, Dream and most recently Rizin Fighting Federation. He is known as the Gracie Hunter or the Gracie Killer due to his wins over four members of the famed Gracie family: Royler Gracie, Renzo Gracie, Ryan Gracie, and Royce Gracie. Sakuraba is famous for beating 15 champions of different top MMA organizations; opponents who were often many weight-classes above him.

Known for his excellent skills in catch wrestling and unorthodox fighting style, he is considered to be one of the greatest mixed martial art fighters of all time, and also holds notable victories over 7 UFC champions, 3 Pancrase Champions, a DREAM champion, a King of the Cage champion and Battlecade Extreme Fighting champion; former Welterweight Champion Carlos Newton, two former Light heavyweight champions Vitor Belfort and Quinton Jackson, former Heavyweight Champion Kevin Randleman, 3-time UFC Tournament champion Royce Gracie, former Superfight champion and King of Pancrase Ken Shamrock, former King of Pancrase Masakatsu Funaki, DREAM Super Hulk Tournament Champion Ikuhisa Minowa, former King of the Cage Light Heavyweight champion Vernon White, and former Battlecade Extreme Fighting champion Marcus Silveira. He is also the first of only two Japanese champions in UFC history. Sakuraba's Pride fights routinely draw more than 20 million viewers in Japan. Sakuraba is the founder of the submission wrestling promotion Quintet, where he has competed since 2018.

Sakuraba became a fan of Japanese professional wrestling during his childhood thanks to the Tiger Mask manga, with the eponymous New Japan Pro-Wrestling wrestler Tiger Mask being his favorite. After being convinced against dropping out of high school to pursue professional wrestling, Sakuraba began a career in amateur wrestling at the age of 15, hoping to gain a useful background to achieve his childhood dream. A high school stand-out, he finished as high as second in the nation before joining the freestyle wrestling squad of Chuo University, a team which had counted Olympic gold medalists Shozo Sasahara and Osamu Watanabe amongst its ranks. He won the East Japan Freshman championship in his first year and served as their team captain thereafter. In his senior year, he finished fourth place in the All-Japan tournament. Amongst his notable wins was one over future Olympic bronze medalist Takuya Ota. Upon graduating from college, Sakuraba initially thought about remaining with Chuo University as a coach. However, at the last minute, he decided to continue his road to professional wrestling.

Sakuraba is married and has a son. He is an atheist.

He has never cared much about diet and admits to drinking alcohol and being a smoker. Regarding the notable differences in weight between himself and his opponents throughout his career, as well as the banning of IV's for rehydration (and potential PED usage), Sakuraba has stated through an interpreter that "it doesn't matter if they use a pill or medicine to get bigger or smaller, I just train hard, eat healthy, fight at my weight and try my best to beat them. For me it doesn't matter if they use drugs, but I would not use it. I'm sure it's bad if they use it to win."

About his proneness to fight outside his weight class, Sakuraba declared "the more impossible the fights got, the more willing to accept them I became". Although he once desired to fight him, he later cited Fedor Emelianenko as the only fighter he ever refused to fight.

In June 2021, Sakuraba was a torch bearer for the 2020 Summer Olympics.