AJ Matthews living the dream by fighting in Japan
AJ Matthews: ‘I’m fighting on the same card as Kazushi Sakuraba in the Saitama Super Arena. You can’t even wrap your head around an actual dream becoming a reality.’
Bellator to Rizin crossover AJ Matthews is living the dream and can’t believe he’s fighting on the same card as KazushiSakuraba.
Back in the day, AJ Matthews caught a VHS tape of KazushiSakuraba fighting in PRIDE. He was living in South Dakota at the time, and he and his brother began learning jiu-jitsu almost immediately afterwards. Saitama, where Sakuraba was fighting, became hallowed ground.
A decade-and-a-half later, he’s one of the Bellator fighters crossing over to compete on the inaugural Rizin card, which takes place in Saitama, Japan on Dec. 29. Even with a disrupted camp heading into his fight with Anatoly Tokov, Matthews feels like he’s living the dream. To hear him tell it, he might not fly to Japan on an airplane…he might just drift across the Pacific on cloud nine.
“It’s almost indescribable, the feeling,” he says. “I didn’t watch the UFC. I watched PRIDE. It’s so crazy. I grew up in Rapid City. My oldest brother, he didn’t live with us. He lived in California. And when I was a kid, I came out to visit him with my middle brother. He showed the VHS of Sakuraba fighting, and sixteen years later, I’m fighting on the same card as Kazushi Sakuraba in the Saitama Super Arena. You can’t even wrap your head around an actual dream becoming a reality.”
