Kazushi Sakuraba was recently declared a UFC Hall Of Fame member. But what many of the new generations might not realize is that Sakuraba only fought a single fight in the UFC Octagon. Majority of his glory days were made at Pride.

But there’s much to be said about the bout. Sakuraba stepped in as a late day replacement to the 4 men one night heavyweright tournament including Tank Abbott, Marcus “Conan” Silveira and Yoji Anjo.

However things didn’t really start getting strange before Sakuraba and Silveira stepped into the ring.

Sakuraba was vastly outweighed by Carlson Gracie team member. Now initially Sakuraba was rocked by a punch and Big John McCarthy stopped the fight. However Sakuraba wasn’t out even though it appeared that way.

Sakuraba refused to leave the cage and his team filed a protest as did the Japanese crowd. Silveira now described that day for mmafighting:

“I won the first fight and was under pressure in the locker room,” Silveira tells MMA Fighting. “It was a delicate situation, even dangerous, I’d say. Since Anjo lost to ‘Tank’ and since the Japanese involved with the UFC that night wanted a Japanese fighter to win no matter how, everything leads to believe that there was some manipulation.”

“I felt trapped after I won the fight,” says Silveira, who had his master Carlson Gracie, Ricardo Pires, Vitor Belfort, and his brother with him in Japan. “I was celebrating when someone came in and said, ‘You have to fight him again, you have to fight him again. It’s a no contest now.’ The reality is that I was pretty much forced to fight.”

Conan” doesn’t think McCarthy made a mistake that night, and thinks the UFC would never have booked him against Sakuraba in the final had Anjo defeated Abbott, since “they couldn’t have a UFC in Japan without a Japanese (fighter) winning a fight.”

“We didn’t debate, they just imposed that,” Silveira says. “I said I wouldn’t come back, but they pressured me. I had no other option. I couldn’t just not go back. I wasn’t afraid, but you’re in a different country and you don’t speak their language, you understand absolutely nothing, and it was logical that they were manipulating.

“You open the locker room door and there’s a bunch of guys in black suits, those mean faces… my friend, what do you think it’s going to happen? That’s how threatened I felt. I fight or something might happen, you know?”

“I wasn’t worried about winning or losing anymore,” he says. “I just wanted to get back to my hotel and pack my bags and leave. I wasn’t worried about the fight, I just wanted to leave. Not that I consider myself to have a weak head, but that affects you. I couldn’t believe that was actually happening.

“There are fights that you think the referee might have stopped it early, but coming back against the same opponent in the same night, even back then, was completely crazy and unusual. I felt that even if I had knocked him out cold in the first fight, I’d have to come back. They needed a Japanese winning a fight.”

Sakuraba ended up winning after all – after only 4 minutes he submitted the bjj black belt via armbar.

This victory led to Sakuraba signing with Pride.

“I don’t have anything against Sakuraba, I’m a fan of his,” Silveira says. “After that controversy, he proved to be a great athlete. I’m happy that he’s being inducted to the Hall of Fame, but I know that I won the first fight between us despite what’s written in our record. What happened, happened. We can’t pretend it happened in a different way.

“MMA was a wild west, who draws first wins. There was no law. And literally being in enemy territory, there was no way out. You find yourself in a situation that the result is not what matters the most, you just have to protect yourself.”

The two fighters saw each other 18 years later when Silveira flew to Japan to corner Kingo Mo Lawal at Rizin as Sakuraba was having his retirement fight against Shinya Aoki.