AJ McKee spent $100,000 on a Samurai suit for his walkout: “It’s an iconic piece.”
The Bellator featherweight world champion AJ McKee defeated the RIZIN lightweight champion Roberto de Souza this past week at the New year’s Eve Bellator MMA vs. Rizin FF event.
The 27-year-old athlete walked out to this fight in the Saitama Super Arena wearing a 25 kg Samurai suit that he says he spent $100,000 on. In an interview with MMA Junkie’s Danny Segura about the suit of armor, McKee explained that he wanted to put on a show for the Japanese audience. He said:
“The fans [in Japan] they genuinely just love the fight game out there and the art aspect of it. And that’s why I came out in the Samurai suit. You know, just really relate to the culture. I felt like I’m the last warrior coming out. You’re not taking me alive, no survivors type.”
AJ McKee on his Samurai suit
The Bellator MMA world champion spent a ton of time researching various Samurai suits that he could get. The one he wore on the fight night was the perfect pick for him. He continued:
“There’s this place you can go about purchasing them. There’s just many suits, he’s got like different suits. It depends on like the General and who the Samurai was under and so forth, there’s levels to it … This one, in particular, it was THAT guy and when I saw it I was like I gotta get this one … This was the one.”
It was a handmade Samurai suit with alligator leather and steel plates. McKee explained how he was mentally able to spend that much, he said:
“If you’re going to do it, go full send on it, you know. I ended up finding this one, it was one-hundred grand. It took a while to pull the trigger. A lot of negotiating. I was like sh*t, I’ll do half right now, get everything else situated, want to walk out in it, put on a great show.”
A fan of the classics, AJ McKee continued:
“Imagine if Sakuraba had a Samurai suit he walked out in his first fight in Japan … It’s an iconic piece … It’s marked in the history books forever.”
See the full interview with AJ McKee below:
