 By January 2007, Shibata left wrestling to focus on mixed martial arts.On December 31, 2011, Shibata returned to professional wrestling to compete on the Inoki Genome Federation (IGF)'s year end event.At the event, Shibata teamed with fellow pro wrestler-turned-mixed martial artist Kazushi Sakuraba to defeat the team of Shinichi Suzukawa and Atsushi Sawada.