On December 29th Kazushi Sakuraba will be facing Shinya Aoki in a super fight. Despite the fact that he will be making a comeback after a 4 year absence, he says he has always been in the condition to compete.

—What was the process on getting this fight confirmed
I have been hearing rumors about the event in March, but my opponent was confirmed 3 weeks before the press conference in October. When I first heard about my opponent, I had no idea how they were going to deal with the weight difference, but I was told that there was no other option so I accepted. Before they were telling me to gain weight since I was supposed to fight a bigger guy, but now they are asking me to lose weight. Funny.

—What are your impressions on Aoki
I’ve trained with him before but it was a while back so I don’t remember. He reminds me of a sticky anaconda watching the way he fights. He’s taller and has a longer reach than me, so it will be annoying if he starts getting into sticky mode.

—You have not fought in MMA for a while
You say that because everything is separate now, but for me there was no difference between MMA and Pro-wrestling during U Inter and Kingdom times. I still am the same way so I really don’t have the feeling that this is a MMA fight. So for me I’ve been working out this whole time so I don’t consider myself being out of the game at all. I’m ready, I have been ready to compete this whole time.

—You’ve fought on a few New Year’s Eve events in the past, do you have any special feelings
I don’t have special feelings, but I think I haven’t been performing that great on New Year’s Eve. A fight that lacks in movement is boring so I prefer not to do so, but I won’t be able to continue to move 10-5-5 total of 20 minutes, and I’m old too. You never know what to expect from a fight, but want to keep moving throughout the fight. I say this all the time, but I want people to think my fight was the best fight of the entire event.