I think people took the easiest headline from that IGN interview rather than what I believe would be most important. The "no cuts" line make more sense in the context in the interview, and considering what Sakurai said after. But the most important thing would be how early in development the game still is. Unlike Brawl, which had the roster finalized (including the cuts to the forbidden 7) by sometime in 2006, the roster is not close to being finalized. And as a game early in development, there are going to issues with things like the Ice Climbers. But they hopefully will be ironed out, because it's still early in development. And so we could still see multi character combatants (because Sakurai clearly says multi character combatants). He could be referring to just the transformation characters or he could be referring to another character like the Ice Climbers.
But the most important and distressing thing is the game is still has a ways to go.