TOKYO, March 3 -- Say what you will about him, one thing is certain regarding Josh Barnett (Pictures): Despite the often oppressive politics of the MMA world, he has carved himself a significant and unique place in the fight game without compromising his convictions.

One of the sport's more polarizing figures, Barnett is a well-rounded and highly skilled heavyweight in a generally anemic division. Yet his headstrong stances on key issues have cost him the ability to test his skills against the best on a consistent basis, especially in today's Zuffa-dominated sport.

Now, after a yearlong hiatus from competition, Barnett is set to return Wednesday against Olympic judo gold medalist Hidehiko Yoshida (Pictures) at World Victory Road's inaugural Sengoku card.

A casualty of Zuffa's Pride buyout, Barnett had found it difficult to commit himself to any one promotion in 2007.

"The market was in disarray, and for guys at the top of the food chain, the opportunities and places to fight were really limited, and that put a real pinch on us and on our abilities to negotiate," Barnett said Monday after arriving in Tokyo. "It's common knowledge that me and the UFC don't get along, so there wasn't going to be any kind of relationship there. Nobody else out there was even able to step up, so I'm glad that Sengoku came around."

Until World Victory Road "came around," the only place that fans could find Barnett in ‘07 was on a pro wrestling card -- not particularly surprising, given his involvement in Japanese professional wrestling from 2003 to 2005, when he took regular matches between his MMA commitments. However, his latest forays into the spectacle-sport proved frustrating for many MMA fans and pundits, who questioned why "The Babyface Assassin" had, by all appearances, forsaken MMA competition.

As a staunch supporter and proud representative of the catch wrestling style, Barnett asserts that pro wrestling and mixed martial arts are in essence the same to him. He fully intends to carry on with both pursuits despite the western MMA community's prevailing animosity toward pro wrestling.

"I've got a few more dates this year that I'm going to wrestle," Barnett said. "I'm still going to fight and I am not choosing one over the other. Pro wrestling and fighting is the same thing to me, and I know pro wrestling has improved my fighting. If I could have fought last year, I would have, but there were no opportunities that I could've taken that wouldn't have been selling myself short or putting myself in a bad spot."

That "bad spot" would have been under the confines of a UFC contract, according to Barnett. Although the Las Vegas-based MMA giant has signed fighters it has had disputes with in the past, following his peers in the great Japanese exodus to the UFC proved impossible for Barnett. In his view, bad blood coupled with contractual compromises would have limited his earnings and career mobility.

"I'm not going to go to the UFC because they have Nogueira and a few other decent guys to sign a bad contract," Barnett said. "I have to look out for me. You can go ahead and throw yourself into anything you want, chasing the top competition and only thinking about that, but in the end you're going to get screwed hard, and you're not going to end up happy.

"I always say, ‘Don't fight for the money,' and I don't fight for the money, but it's still an important aspect. You want to be happy where you're at, and you want to be fulfilled, and you certainly don't want the added stress of dealing with all that other nonsense.

"I like to go my own way. I like to take opportunities and do things as they come, and most of the time, things are just too restrictive to allow me to do that. So I always try to go to the place that doesn't try to hold me down."

Regardless of the obstacles he has faced in the stateside MMA scene, Barnett has become a savvy veteran of the fight game. In and out of the ring, on both sides of the Pacific, he has earned a unique reputation among his MMA peers. Progressive in his fighter-centered versus promotion-centered view of the sport, as well as in his vocal support of female mixed martial artists, Barnett has been a pivotal and forthright advocate throughout the sport's young history.

Never at a loss for commentary, he is also one of the few critics unafraid to speak against industry leader Zuffa, particularly in its attempt to commandeer Pride FC last year. With his ties in the Japanese fight world and his previous experiences with Zuffa, Barnett successfully extrapolated what was ahead for Zuffa and Pride Worldwide, stating on the record in early 2007 that "Pride is dead" well before Dana White and company had made it official.

"I never expected Zuffa to do anything with Pride," Barnett said. "It's hard enough to work over here as a foreigner, and now they're going to come over here and tell the Japanese that the things they've been doing longer than the UFC has been in existence needs to be changed because they have ‘a better way'? They're not going to hear it."

Barnett also confirmed rumors of resistance on the Japanese end of the Zuffa-led Pride project.

"The Japanese had no interest in it after Dana White said they were going to make changes to the regulations to make it like the UFC," Barnett explained. "Basically, everyone told me, ‘That's it, we don't want this. We won't support this. Pride Worldwide is basically just UFC in Japan, so we don't want anything to do with it.'"