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I don't think the number of followers has anything to do with how good I am fighting. That said, I am good at fighting, and I do have a lot of followers.
I don't care about having a fancy car. I don't have a lot of the wants and needs that a lot of people have where I would need to make a $1 million a fight.
I wasn't granted the opportunity to fight some of the best guys in the world. And that was something that was not on my end by any sense of the imagination.
I have a great relationship with the whole Missouri athletic department. I made friends with everyone from the administrators to the janitors and everyone in between.
When someone decides to come into the UFC, and they don't have a combat sports background, you're kind of thinking, 'Does he really understand what he's getting into?'
I don't like all the cheating that's going in mixed martial arts. I don't know what percentage of high-level fighters do it, but I think it would be a significant amount.
I don't think I could ever make 155. I made 163 for the Olympics, and that is a super low weight for me. I'm a fairly big person, and for me to make 163 was incredibly difficult.
It's like, hey, I've done what I could do, I've accomplished a lot, and now this - especially with wrestling - if this next generation wants to pass me up, great job. Good for them.
If I want a kid to be good at a front headlock - which, if you're gonna wrestle at a high level, you need a good front headlock - I'm gonna put him in there 50 times in that practice.
When I came through the ranks in wrestling - in high school and college - those systems have been in place for 100 years, and they're fairly standard training across the board for all the colleges.
While it may not have been the flashiest or the most creative, I brought a very unique skill set, and I executed in a fashion that very few have done before me and, I think, very few will do after me.
If I'm coaching at my academy, and we were drilling the front headlock, we don't just say, 'OK, now go five-minute goes,' because how many tries are they gonna get at going at the front headlock position?
If you can't say where you're going, you're not going to get there. And I've known all along where I'm going, and sometimes the road takes a few curves that you didn't see, but you've got to stay the path.
It's just funny because I think a long time back I was not a fan favorite at all, and now people have followed my journey, have seen the struggle and the perseverance I've had, and they can relate to that.
Andrey Koreshkov is not well-rounded. He's been taken down and mounted and has his back taken by Lyman Good, which tells me he's a terrible grappler. He isn't well rounded. He's a good striker, but that's it.
I think every promoter's job is to pump their athletes up. Like, you see, Dana White did it all the time with branding people: all of a sudden, they're the best thing since sliced bread, just because that's the promoter's job.
I want to go and fight the best guys in the world and show people I'm the best. And hey, if something doesn't go my way - I don't think that's gonna happen. I realize that's a possibility in competition, and that's what happens.
I think I'm the best in the world at 170 pounds, so why would I need to go down? If, at some point, I beat everyone at 170, I'd consider going up. If I've eliminated all my challenges, yeah, at that point I would consider going up.
A lot of wrestling interviews are boring, plain and simple. They don't say anything you never heard before. Your basic wrestling interview is, you ask me how am I going to do, and I say, 'I'm going to do my best. I'm going to wrestle hard.'
Obviously, everyone knows it is hard to hang it up, but I'm definitely going to try and do it the right way and not like how combat athletes have done and hold on too long for every last fleeting moment. I don't want to be one of those people.
In wrestling, if you want to be the best wrestler, you show up at the U.S. Nationals. If you win that, you go to World Team Trials. You make the World Team, you go to the World Championships, and we all know who the best is at the end of the year.
Some people who come from high levels in other backgrounds where they're used to being the best or used to being on a kind of pedestal, it's hard to kind of lower yourself again and just be one of the grunts. I kind of enjoyed that challenge in MMA.
Obviously, in a sport like golf, we see Tiger Woods fall off. There's not really too much damage he can take from that, although when you watch him and he sucks, and you're like, 'God, you used to be so good but you suck now,' it's disconcerting as a fan.
When I couldn't sign with the UFC, I think my goal of being Number 1 in the world went out the window. There's just no way of doing that at Welterweight without being in the UFC. I could go 50-0, and as long as it's outside the UFC, I'm not going to be Number 1.
Young guys kind of have this chip on their shoulder of, 'I want to prove something,' right? 'I've got to prove how tough I am. I've got to prove how good I am.' And man, now as I'm getting older, I think it's almost sad when guys my age and older still have that chip on their shoulder.
There are conferences every year where all the major coaches get together, and they talk about the issues in wrestling, what's going to happen. There's a major governing body, U.S.A. Wrestling, which oversees a lot of the issues. The organization is there in wrestling to make a very well-balanced, organized system.
A Division I college wrestling team has so many guys at such a high level it'd be like having every single guy in the gym being a top 10 UFC guy, and that's who you're competing against every single day. Most everyone has been wrestling since they were 5 years old. It's been their dream to wrestle in college. There's such a high level of intensity.