Sergio Non at USA Today has a good interview with Dean Lister in preparation for UFC 92's Lister vs Yushin Okami bout.
His take on Okami:
Okami is a really good neutralizer. If you're a real good striker, he can take you down, and ground and pound you. If you're a good grappler, he's hard to take down. He's going to be able to make your strong point not as strong. He has pretty good endurance. He keeps going a constant pace in a fight. I've heard he's very strong. He's real tall and he's a good counterpuncher.
He talks about his evolution as a grappler, from Wrestling to Sambo:
The way that (U.S.) sambo is, or how it was after I got out of high school in '95, it was just linked to wrestling. They had Greco-Roman, freestyle and they had sambo in some tournaments as a third style. And to be honest, it was just a bunch of wrestlers that learned straight armbars, straight footlocks, straight kneelocks, and you had a jacket (so) you could throw. It's not like we were like we were the Russians. It wasn't such a different style for most Americans; most Americans just trained it like it was wrestling, then they just added a few submissions. I found out submissions just were my thing. I started submitting everyone and before you know it, I was two-time national sambo champion.
How he got into jiu jitsu:
I tried jiu-jitsu. It seemed to me it was fighting where they spent too much time on the ground, I thought. But I got into it and realized that if I can throw someone down, it doesn't mean I win a figh necessarily. How do you finish a fight? I was intrigued by the idea of finishing someone. It was something I was getting into in sambo; I liked the idea of finishing people with a submission more than a throw or a takedown. It just kind of blended well for me. You can't do a chokehold in (the American style of) sambo and I felt like that was a little bit incomplete. Jiu-jitsu seemed more complete, as far as all the submissions (being) included. It was something I found natural.
He also has an interesting commentary on the evolution of MMA in the 1990s. (see my series on MMA in the 1990s):
When I first saw it, pure jiu-jitsu was winning everything, and then all of a sudden it came to where the wrestlers had a year or two where they were completely crushing everyone: you know, Mark Kerr; and you had Coleman; you had these guys just killing everyone. And then you had a resurgence of guys like Maurice Smith; guys that learned enough jiu-jitsu to where you couldn't finish them on the ground; and you could get tired taking them down; and they could hurt you on the feet. And then you had a resurgence of submissions. It just went up and down, up and down; and this was just mixed martial arts. And I think it's going to continue to do that.