—How is your present condition?
I feel great, my conditioning is not bad at all. I just have to concentrate on the basics. This is my first time doing this so I don’t really know if this conditioning is good or not. However, I have prepared well, 90% there.

—Are you confident in winning?
I am really confident. I cannot see myself losing this at all.

—How do you feel now compared to the first time you had a match?
This is quite different from Sumo in that in Sumo, your opponent was named the day before, whereas for this, I knew 2-3 months ago. That’s the difference but I just have to wait and see how it feels when I get out there. Ask me again in January! (LOL)

—How do you see yourself winning this?
It doesn’t matter how tired I am or what happens, I always want to be on the front foot. That’s the fight I want to fight. I don’t want to match my opponent, I want to be the aggressor.

—Did you get any advice from Akebono?
I did, but it was more like “let’s kick butt” rather than advice.

—You trained with Tomiyama?
When I was much younger, 20 years ago, I did do a training camp similar to what I did with him this time around, but never again did I think I’d have to do one of those again! I used totally different muscles than what I was used to (in my sumo days) but the training camp was great, I loved it.

—What was the hardest thing you did in training?
The stair dash. It went on forever. Those stairs were big.

—What advice did Shouji Akira give you?
We trained together the entire time and he gave me lots of advice. There are so many situations that are the same in both sumo and MMA, we had lots to talk about.

—What technique do you have the most confidence with?
I have to see how it goes in round 1, what kind of things my opponent tries. Then I will use what I have in my arsenal.

—What kind of super heavyweight fight do you want to show the fans?
When it’s all over, I want to be able to say to myself, “you did good”.