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It's an entertainment sport, and we go out to entertain the fans, but at the end of the day, what really matters is your influence on others.
When I get in there, everything gets blocked out. I just focus on the person in the cage with me. That's all my brain has room for at the time.
When I'm getting ready for a fight - when I'm in that locker room or I'm making that walk and I finally get to the Octagon - it's all spiritual.
Look at the guys I've fought. Anderson Silva. Lyoto Machida. Vitor Belfort. All those guys are much quicker than Luke Rockhold and I did just fine.
People gotta realize as a fighter you want to become a champion because you get paid way more money. So the belt is very intriguing for that reason.
You're always trying to feel confident and to feel good about yourself, but what it comes down to is really giving up to someone else. Having faith.
For me, preparation is all about the physical, the mental and most importantly, the spiritual. If I'm not spiritually in the right place, I'm a mess.
I wanna get myself in such good shape that no matter how much I push myself in a fight, I know that the other guy is gonna be a little bit more tired.
I struggle just like everybody else struggles. It's always a struggle in life to overcome temptation. I just try and get through it. No one is perfect.
People forget, I was 9-0, I was fighting Anderson Silva. I was fighting the best guys this sport has ever seen, one after the other, with no experience.
I want to have the biggest challenges in front of me and conquer them. That's why I wanted to fight Anderson Silva when nobody else wanted to fight him.
When I've trained as hard as I possibly can through training camp and I come to the end, where my body is worn out and I'm tired, I know I'm ready to peak.
When I was at 205, it was kind of weird eating whatever I want and not getting trimmed and not really being disciplined with my diet. It was kind of weird.
We bought a dog, and we financed it - a $1,400 dog. We had no money, so me and my wife had to put our names together with our credit just to finance a dog.
I grew up in a rough neighborhood, so I fought a lot. Even when I was wrestling, if I lost a match, I always thought, That guy would never beat me in a fight.
To win the belt from Bisping, the hardest problem for me would be to train hard for him because he stinks. I'm just kidding, he's really good... No, I'm lying.
I feel like smaller countries, other countries, they cheer, they support their people no matter what. We need to get a little bit more supportive of our people.
To walk around and people ask me who the champion is in my weight class and I have to say Michael Bisping, it's a little embarrassing, but that's just the way it goes.
There's only so much you can control when you're fighting, so the things you can control - like your fight song - are pretty important. So you want to pick that wisely.
I grew up taking the Long Island Railroad from Baldwin, New York into Penn Station and walking upstairs to Madison Square Garden. Those are some of my favorite memories.
I'm going to win the belt at middleweight and I'm going to go up to 205 and win the belt there after I dominate the middleweight division for a little bit - that will happen.
You want to help people and make the world a better place in whatever way you can. I've tried to share the things I've learned, and for me it really is all about being a role model.
When you're so physically and emotionally invested in something - like you have to be in MMA - there's nothing like having your friends and family there to support you on fight night.
A lot of these players, if you listen to the Islanders or the Rangers, they get interviewed in the locker room right after the game, it's very structured answers. They're very protected.
I remember watching Anderson Silva fight Dan Henderson at UFC 82. I had never really watched MMA, but I looked up to Dan Henderson. He was a wrestler, like me, but also a tough, powerful mixed martial artist.
We have a lot of great stars and so many different things, some of the other countries don't have that. So when they get somebody, they support them to the death. America, I kind of think we take it for granted sometimes.
That's why everybody loves to tune in and watch these fights, because at any given moment, any given fight, any given fighters, anything can happen. A fighter could win nine out of 10 times, but there's always that one time.
I really like Cain Velasquez. I like his pace that he puts on; he is mentally and physically breaking everybody he goes with. He's just tenacious and relentless. I like Anderson Silva, too. I like his style. He's very relaxed.
I never really ate greens, what I always did do was I always ate peanut butter and honey and I ate it all day. There's not much nutritional value in that. I just love peanut butter and I love honey so I just put them together.
You don't wanna peak too early in training camp, but you don't wanna be out of shape or not to the point where you're able to peak. It's a science to be able to find the happy medium where your body and mind are at their best.
My brother was probably one of the toughest kids from my neighborhood and he didn't make it easy on me. He made sure I was getting beat up as much as possible growing up. If he wasn't beating me up, he was making his friends beat me up.
I've never had anything. I just wanted to one day live comfortable. Like, be able to go out to lunch with my friends without being like, crap, I don't know if I can afford this bill right now. I shouldn't be doing this. That's all I really wanted.
The thing about mixed martial arts is you have to know every single martial art in the world or you're at a disadvantage. So, there's so much to learn. I have to know wrestling. I have to know kick boxing. I have to know boxing. I have to know karate.
As I got older, I lived right next next to the Long Island Railroad, so in junior high and high school I'd just jump on the train with friends and head to the city. We'd run away from the conductors, hide from them in the bathroom. It was just what you did.
There's times where you get the loud, crazy comments from me, and there's times where I say basic things, and stay quiet because I don't want to cause any drama. Sometimes I'm in the mood where I'm just going to tell it how it is, and have fun. And whoever doesn't like it, OK.
When I started and first got to the MMA gym the guys would start and say, 'You're like the All-American kid.' It was because, I don't know, I go to church every Sunday, I got married young and I've always been an All-American in college having gone All-American all four years.
I hit adversity when I was at the top of the world. Most people hit adversity when they're just at the beginning, when they're just getting started. I hit it when everybody was watching, and everybody had comments and everybody was doubting me. It was a tough situation to be in.
Any time you're banged up, your body hurts, you don't really feel like going to the gym. That's when I feel like you really have to push through it. That's when you really make the leaps and bounds in your game. So, pushing through those days is never easy, but that's what gets you good.
I was living out on Long Island in Baldwin, New York when Hurricane Sandy hit. With the storm surge, the whole first floor of our house was under about three feet of water. We lost a lot of valuable stuff - sentimental stuff like pictures and Christmas ornaments. Nobody expected flooding that bad.
I've been through so much damn adversity, I've had so much critiqued on me. From being the undefeated world champion to never really getting the love or the respect I feel I deserved when I was on top and then finally getting knocked down and then everybody jumping on top, trying to kick me while I was down.
I watch something in the gym, try to do it and may not get it. When I go home that night and my wife is talking to me and I'm not answering her, it is because I'm visualizing that thing I'm working on. I'll do that all day long. Before I go to bed I'm still thinking about it, and that happens until I can see myself doing it.
I've fought all these top Brazilians. They're all supporting their people, Anderson Silva, they're supporting him. Lyoto Machida, they're all supporting him. I didn't have the full support of America. Not everyone American was rooting for me because I'm from America. If they were rooting for me, it's because they were a fan of me.
Getting hit is part of the job. You don't want the first time you're getting punched to be in the fight because there's a lot of shock and awe and you won't react well. I like to get hit in sparring. I don't want to get concussed, or I don't want to be getting knocked out, but I want some shock treatment to prepare me for the fight.
I think any type of setback you have, any tough time you've got, getting through it is what makes you who you are. It makes you a tougher person. I think whatever you've been through in your life makes you a tougher person. I'm very grateful for the background I have, every tough situation I've been through because it's made me who I am.
I tried to take every little thing and use it as an advantage. People were asking me how it felt to be in the UFC, and I wasn’t thinking about that. All that mattered was Alessio Sakara. I had to win that fight. Even now I still haven’t got time to sit back. Again, this is a must win, must dominate, fight for me in my eyes, and I won’t be happy unless that’s the way it goes.