Bobby Ologun is the stage name for naturalized Japanese citizen近田ボビー, who was born a Nigerian national in Ibadan and acquired Japanese citizenship in 2007. Bobby's pre-Japanese name is "Alaji KarimOLOGUN". He choose his nickname given name (which became his legal Japanese given name) from the singer Bobby Brown. He speaks three languages: Japanese, Yoruba, and English — and graduated from the University of Nigeria.
According to his comedy-autobiography (and should thus be taken with a slight grain of salt), he came to Japan in 1998 after hearing good things about it from his father. Coming to Japan on business to purchase tubes for automobile tires, he spent his capital on pachinko instead, and then decided to stay in Japan because Japan didn't have much in way of automobile tires that used tubes. In 1999, he met his to-be wife in a 居酒屋 (Japanese pub), Kyoko, and got married in Nigeria. He got his first big break in 2001 when he was discovered by television scouts working part time in the back kitchen of a Tokyo cafe in 渋谷区代官山.
As Japan does not allow married Japanese nationals to have separate family names, he chose his wife's name rather than have his wife, Kyoko, choose Ologun, or the both of them choose an unrelated third name.
In professional sports, he has done both kickboxing and MMA (mixed martial arts) at K-1 tournaments. He even beat 曙太郎, also a naturalized citizen (formerly Hawaiian-American Chad Haaheo ROWAN), who rose to the top rank of 横綱 in the sumo world before retiring.
In addition to professional fighting sports, Bobby is better known as a television celebrity and comedian, having been active since 2004. He was a frequent guest of さんまのSUPERからくりTV ("Sanma's Karakuri-TV") and other Japanese variety shows. His television persona gimmick is his constant Japanese language gaffes due to his non-native command of the language as a foreigner, but the audience is in on the joke: in many segments, his fellow Japanese comedians (and his family) tease him when they catch him "acting straight" and forgetting to put on his routine. Additionally, many segments have detailed his personal life, showing him to be a good responsible man to his wife and four children (two sometimes appear on television with him). He has also had cameos, appearances, and interviews in video games, Japanese movies, commercials, and radio shows. He has authored two books and a DVD. As of 2012 he stars in his own show,ボビー's スタジアム ("Bobby's Stadium"), which is broadcast on Television Saitama.
His professional profile claims he is born in 1973, though it was discovered that his Nigerian passport showed him to be born in 1966. He claimed (perhaps as part of his comedy act) that Nigeria gets birth dates wrong on passports all the time. As part of this joke, his website has a completely different birth date.
He has one younger brother, "Andy Ologun", who is also active in MMA (kickboxing and K-1) as a middleweight and managed by a Japanese talent agency.
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