If I would have thought like fans think, I'd be broke and brain dead and fighting everybody every weekend.

I'm the kind of guy that grows, and that's what I do everyday in the gym. Work on new stuff and stay relevant.

If you're training for a fight, you're going to be pretty much, there's going to be days where you're hurting.

Of course every fighter, whether they admit it or not, they have aches and pains and they go into fights hurt.

Grit, determination, the right amount of crazy, self belief - everything it takes to be a champion. I have that.

I've put it all on the line every time, win, lose, or draw, and that's what I want to be left behind in my legacy.

I'm chasing gold. And whatever fight can get me closer to being a world champion, those are the fights that I want.

Now I'm with the American Top Team, I'm a better fighter, I'm a more patient fighter, I've improved in every aspect.

Conor McGregor seems like a good athlete, he seems like a decent counter-puncher. But, he also seems like a scumbag.

Cutting to featherweight took months of intense weight cutting and training. Going to lightweight, I can fight more often.

I need to celebrate life because I'm in a good spot, I work hard, and I am happy with who I am and what I do for a living.

If a champ has to take a long layoff then I think that's the only time interim titles should be introduced to the division.

I've said it before, I'm not a matchmaker, I don't call the shots. I just prepare and fight the guys after I sign the contract.

You can't just go in and say, 'I'm going to be tougher that you,' you know? Heavy bags are tough, but I've never been beat by one.

You have to be tough. All these guys are tough. But at some point, you have to outsmart and outhink and outplan these top fighters.

The cut made me hate the process of getting ready for a fight. I was focused on how to make weight instead of how to beat my opponent.

You can't just be only going to the gym when you sign a fight contract or you'll just be the same fighter every time, just more experienced.

When I'm in south Florida I'm training, resting, training. I'm working on my craft out here, very tediously. That's what I come out here for.

I feel like everybody's who fighting, young fighters and still learning and growing, that should be their goal - to be the UFC world champion.

My whole career, the ups, the downs, the victories, the defeats, the lessons I've learned and kept rolling, that's what's made me the fighter I am today.

People I grew up with, my family, work in the oil fields. Everyone works a labor job - construction, concrete. All we know is work. It's a physical culture.

I want to entertain the fans and put on great fights and have 'Fight of the Nights' and have exiting matchups, but at the same time I want to be the undisputed world champion.

I don't want to have an asterisk next to my accomplishments for the rest of my life. I don't want everybody to say, 'interim champ' every time someone says Dustin was the champion.

Years and years ago, like in 2006, my wife, I didn't have a car, she would drive me to weigh-ins, we would sleep in broken-down motels and I would fight the next day. Just me and her.

I feel like I've always been a great fighter but I'm learning the patience part of it and not getting overwhelmed with emotion and adrenaline and going out there and brawling like a maniac.

Every fight is like a different landscape of what you go through. But sometimes it's small injuries. Sometimes it's lessons you walk away with. Every fight is different but they all hurt, for sure.

I feel like I can submit Khabib, but feel like I'm going to stop him. I don't know how it's going to happen, but I'm either going to knock him out or I'm going to submit him. I'm going to finish Khabib Nurmagomedov.

Yeah I do think featherweight is done for me. It sucks because I worked hard and fought a lot of hard fights and did a lot of things right to move up the rankings and I have to abandon all that moving to 155 starting fresh.

Seven years is a long time, and seven years of fighting the best guys in the best organization in the world, the biggest organization in the world, it hardens you. You don't stay seven years without evolving. It doesn't happen.

There's always the pressure to win. That never goes away, but being a main event, I want to go out there and put on a great show for the fans and live up to being a main event. That doesn't really stress me out or pressure me anymore. The fight is enough.

They had to re-shape the head of my femur back round. They had to trim my hip socket up a little bit. I had a lot of extra bone growth just from years of stressing it out. Because of that bone growth, it caused an impingement in my hip, which tore my labrum off the bone.

I need to celebrate life because I'm in a good spot, I work hard, and I am happy with who I am and happy with what I do for a living, and sometimes I just focus and overwhelm myself so much with the fights and getting better, that I just need to slow it down and enjoy life and enjoy training.

Fighting comes down to who you are as a person. With B.J. Penn, he has no problems, not a hard upbringing and came up with money or whatever and he's just a fighter, he enjoys the fight and he refined his skills so I don't think it necessarily has to be a rough upbringing for guys to be great fighters.

Win or lose or draw, you always go back and critique your performance and say you could have done things better. Even if I put the guy away in one round, I can go back and say I made a lot of mistakes and need to tighten up. But that's the type of person I am. Improve. Improve. Improve. When I lose I come back stronger than ever.

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