The Lion's Den is well known for producing high quality fighters, especially in the middleweight division. The Den, at one time, was stacked with talent like Frank Shamrock, Jerry Bohlander, and Guy Mezger. After winning a middleweight title, Mezger seemed to be on top of the middleweight world. Though luck or fate, Mezger slipped by an unknown opponent by the name of Tito Ortiz that would later come back to haunt him. After taking out his stable mate, Jerry Bohlander, Ortiz set his eyes on Mezger for revenge, and he got it. Ortiz continued on to fight an epic battle with one of the top two heavyweights in the world, Frank Shamrock, and lost to him. Mezger was quiet in the fight game, but got a chance to reassert his position in the middleweight world. He took a fight with the other top middleweight in the world, Kazushi Sakuraba, on very short notice and lost a very controversial position. Many people thought that Guy knocked Sakuraba off the middleweight mountain. Once again, Guy seems to be the last minute go to man to fill an already great final installment of Pride Grand Prix 2000.

FCF: You have signed to fight Maasaki Satake again on short notice in Pride Grand Prix 2000. Is this is becoming a habit of taking fights on short notice?
Guy Mezger: It does appear that way, doesn't it [laughs]? I always feel like I'm game to fight barring an injury or barring being horribly out of shape. I'm not really ever horribly out of shape. Probably a great deal of my own cockiness, I bet that I can beat anybody. I was training Ken for this fight and in the process of training Ken, I'm taking the lumps too so when they offered it [the fight] to me, I figured, "What the heck?" Buckle down, train a little harder and take the fight.

FCF: Are you in good enough shape even with such short notice?
GM: I always look at it like this, you're never in good enough shape. I just go out there and fight. This year is a little different than previous years when you're the top guy. In a year period, I won the Ultimate and King of Pancrase and all that. You kind of get into a mode of fighting not to lose instead of fighting to win, so to speak. This year I basically looked at fighting more of [getting] back to the roots of it where I was having fun, a little bit more physical. I hate to sound macho. I'm not out to hurt anybody, but anybody that fights me this year, they're in for a fight. I'm coming at them with both barrels.

FCF: Satake is known as a powerful stand up striker. Your background is heavily stand up oriented. Are you planning on testing your stand up skills against a K-1 caliber fighter?
GM: I'm not taking anything away from him. He's very good. It's not that. It's just that I was a world champion too and I'd like to see how I'd do. I've fought Demetrius Stephanos who was third ranked in the world. I lost a split decision to him, which I don't know what judges were watching that fight, but the general consensus was I won that fight. I came out completely unscathed from it so I figured that's an active kickboxer there with 30 or something more fights. I think he was a former world champion too…and I'm fighting Satake, who is a former world champion and a great fighter. So, I figure I can fight him on his element. I don't think he can fight me on my element.

FCF: Since Satake is seemingly one dimensional, do you see this as an easy fight for you?
GM: No, no. You can never discount somebody who is big and strong. I mean, again, I'm giving up 20 lbs to him. You're looking at a big, strong guy with tremendous amount of skills. He's known as a kickboxer, but his roots are karate, Japanese style of karate. It isn't the American crap that's taught out here in the states. So, that means he has a good background in judo and also and he's also competed in Rings. He's somebody you cannot take lightly. He didn't have a very good performance against Mark Coleman, but then again, sometimes we don't have good performances. My performance against Tito was not reflective of how good I am. I think people are underestimating him and I'm not. I'm definitely training hard for this.

FCF: What's your game plan against a large and powerful opponent like Satake?
GM: Come right at him. I'm not scared of him. He doesn't kick harder than I've ever been kicked. Let's put it this way, he doesn't punch harder than Alex Andrade, my training partner. I got good kickboxers and I feel comfortable with my stand up stuff. I'm going to come right at him. He's not going to have to look for me. I'm going to be right in his face.

FCF: After seeing Satake's fight against Coleman, have you adjusted your initial game plan?
GM: It wasn't really much of a fight to really make an assessment of it. Like I said, he just didn't have a good performance against [Coleman]. I don't think that's reflective of how good of an athlete he is or how good of a fighter he is. So, that really wasn't much help to tell you the truth [laughs].

FCF: After your impressive performance against Sakuraba, you are back up to the top of rankings of the middleweights. Has there been any progress with a rematch against Sakuraba?
GM: Yeah, its in the works. They [the Japanese promoters] have a lot of things that they want to do with Sakuraba. He's the number one draw over there. They're going to protect him for a while against certain things. I think he's going to be Royce. He beats Royce, he's a legend. They're not going to run the risk of having him lose. He's a moneymaker for them. When I fought him, 60,000 people were really upset with me at the Tokyo Dome. I expect to fight him sometime next year. That's kind of what the game plan is. Sometime in February, I think, when they kind of had an idea for that.

FCF: Do you think that Otsuka will prove to be a challenge to Ken Shamrock or just an easy warm-up fight for him?
GM: No, he's a very tough guy. The thing with Ken is that Ken is a tremendous athlete, but he's been four years out of the game. The important thing is that four years is a long time to be out…and to be honest, this is a dangerous opponent. The reason being, I wasn't real happy with this opponent because he's a guy who won't quit. I think people underestimate his skills and he's supposed to lose. If he does real well against Ken, well then it's an upset. If Ken goes up there and kills him, well, it's Ken Shamrock, he's supposed to. So, it's kind of a no win situation, but we'll see how Ken does. I have a tremendous amount of confidence in Ken and he's proven that he can fight, even in the most adverse situation.

FCF: When are you planning to leave for Japan?
GM: Twenty-fourth [of April].

FCF: Anything else planned for you?
GM: I still have my fights in Pride coming up, maybe fighting in July. I'm going to probably try to either fight or be part of Pure Action kickboxing events that are done in New York with Joel [Gold, editor of FCF] and Derek Panza. They work hard to put on a good show and I'd like to support those guys. They're both real good guys. I'm going to be there to either fight or bring fighters or something on that show and other than that, I don't have anything except seminars.

FCF: Thank you for your time and good luck to you and Ken in Japan.
GM: I appreciate it. You take it easy ok!