Get a boxer and get him wrestling for a minute or two - the arms get so heavy, filled with blood, they can't even hold them up any more, they can't box.

Conor knows how to fight and he knows how to box. He has been boxing professional boxers for his whole life, he has had almost 50 amateur boxing fights.

I think against Cub I get it done. He comes in, he's very open, he throws wild shots, and he has never, I promise you, in his life felt power that I have.

Many MMA fighters have tried boxing before, even just sparring for a few rounds, but no boxer has done MMA rounds. There's just no way for them to do that.

Obviously UFC was one of those kind of dreams that we weren't sure if we were ever going to reach, so for us, the biggest belt was the Cage Contender belt.

I've said it before, me and Conor are very, very good friends, and he's certaintly helped me get into the UFC, you know, it is what it is, it makes no difference.

I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that money was a big factor in signing for Bare Knuckle - we're prize fighters, and our success is measured by the size of our purse.

In Russia, the people have been brought up tough. It used to be the Soviet Union. The thing everybody thinks of when they think about Russia is how tough the people are.

I feel Alex White is exactly the type of guy I always talk about, with an undeserved, padded record. There's many, many of them in the UFC, because this is the easy way in.

If people are watching your fights and they care about what you do then that is success to me. As far as I'm concerned, I am one of the most successful fighters in the world.

I want to be able to take fights across multiple sports and one of the main reasons is I really want the Tukhugov fight. I want to be able to accept that should that call come.

Guys don't want to take hard fights, they avoid any challenges, they take the easiest fights and then they get rewarded with a UFC contract. That's not right, that should never happen that way.

It might seem that way, but getting hit with a bare knuckle is not as raw as getting hit with a bare knee, or getting kicked with a shin to your head, which I have been a few times. In that sense, it's nothing.

They should bring up my record, and call it the fighter bible. The warrior bible. All those guys with padded records should read it everyday, and they should put my picture on their wall as the Jesus Christ of MMA.

Whenever someone has an unorthodox approach, different to what a standard boxer would look like, they write it off as being bad. They never seem to look at the normal approach to boxing and think that it might be slightly outdated.

Artur Sowinksi is a fight that I want to put right for a long time - that win was stolen from me. His friend was the promoter, a Polish promoter at the time and he overturned it, but that's a win in my mind - it was a win that was stolen from me.

There's a reason why MMA is only three five-minute rounds, or five fives when it's a title fight. MMA is so much more demanding on the body - the wrestling, the changing levels, all that takes a lot out of you. Boxing is a breeze for us after MMA.

There is such a thing as building a fight, that's no problem, we're going into fight each other. That takes certain levels of intensity that you have to have. You're going in there to hurt the guy and he's going to do the same to you so that's understandable.

Having your hands up doesn't stop you from getting knocked out and there are a lot of advantages to having your hands down. It's also more exciting because it looks very impressive from the fans' perspective, which is a big factor in the entertainment business.

When you don't have to worry about the financial side, you can truly concentrate on the craft. You can truly concentrate on the fights you really want to have. You have that freedom and it's extremely important especially when you have a family and you have to provide.

What Aldo is good at is the leg kicks, that's what oppened a lot of doors for him. He would land those leg kicks, and then the shot would come from there, but in terms of his hands, he doesn't have, I mean he has power, of course he does, but nowhere near the power that I have, I promise you that.

Growing up in the Soviet Union, ballroom dancing wasn't the coolest thing to do. But that probably made me tougher, because it wasn't an easy task to do ballroom dancing and not get bullied. And I never got bullied in my life, even though I changed to five secondary schools in three different countries.

When you ask to go to some other country and fight their local best guy, and you know the judges are going to be his friend and the referee is going to be his coach, the head of commission guys is probably going to be his relative or something like that, and you're asked to do that for 100 Euros. Nobody wants to do that.

When you fight someone, it's different. It's a lot of conflict that you can have. Once you fought somebody, that's it. There's not much to it anymore. You went in there, you settled it like men, one on one, and that's it. After that, I don't think there's really a point to kind of carry it with you, any of that negativity.

The thing everybody thinks of when they think about Russia is how tough the people are. When they see a fighter continuously pulling out, that's something that they really don't like. Then they look at a guy like Conor who always shows up and does what he says he's going to do. That really resonates with the Russian public.

Let's be honest here - 99 percent of MMA fans haven't got a clue what's going on. They don't understand the game enough to comment on any of that. They don't know how easy it is to have an impressive record. I could have 10 guys in my gym tomorrow, beat them all up, and there's 10 wins for my record. It is that easy. It is that easy to be 10-0.

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