Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Anytime my life has ever thrown me a curveball, I can go back to that and draw a lot of confidence for myself knowing I can persevere.
I know deep down I'm destined to be a world champion and maybe it's to be attained in the most prestigious division in the UFC at welterweight.
I think the Eddie Alvarez fight is a good fight that makes sense - a couple Italian guys throwing down. I've got nothing but respect for the guy.
In every fight, I have a spot that I could lose the first round. When do the oddsmakers ever like me? But it's not a math equation, it's a fight.
I'm around a world-class staff that is pushing me to the limit while making sure I don't break myself, which is something I've had a problem with.
I found wrestling when I was 11 years old. About two years later, I convinced my mom to let me rent my first UFC tape. I was fascinated by the sport.
I haven't fought for a while and didn't want a warm-up fight. I wanted to jump right back in the pit and I got what I asked for. I got Anthony Pettis.
I got as high as being ranked 7th at lightweight and I really believe this deep down to my bones that I was really only fighting to half my potential.
Mario Yamasaki should just crawl in a hole and never step inside of any type of professional mixed martial arts event. He should never officiate, ever again.
I believe I'm destined to be a world champion and I'm getting closer to what I want. Part of it is developing a championship mentality and I feel I have that now.
I've always prided myself on being mentally tough, but just because you're mentally tough doesn't mean that what's going on between your ears is always good things.
Like every fight, after you make weight, you want to go crazy and eat after you've gone through a camp where you can't do that. So I'd eat pizza and wings and beers.
I was still part of that trend where it was see how low you can get, get as small as you can get, be the biggest guy in your weight class, and it started to burn me out.
I want to be great, I want to fight the best guys, I want to test myself, I want see what my limits are. I don't think a lot of guys in this sport really have that mentality.
Being mentally tough is having to battle those demons and push yourself out of your comfort zone and force yourself to be the person that your mind is telling you you aren't.
I'd love a training camp. But if they walked in the door right now and said, 'Do you want to fight for the title in the next 10 minutes?' I'm out the door, warming up, ready to go.
I'm a blue collar guy from Spokane, Washington, who was raised to just be respectful, be a sportsman, and just speak with your performances, and I'm glad that I'm back to my old ways.
I had never fought a guy before that I had put on a pedestal the way I did with Carlos Condit. I've got his walkout shirt. He's a former champion. I'm a huge fan. I doubted myself a lot of times.
The loss of my dad gave me a lot of inspiration because sometimes I stop and think, 'Would everybody have done the same thing that I did?' It was a very tough thing to cope with. I only went home for less than 24 hours.
What if I could just focus on fighting? What would that be like? What would it be like to take advantage of all the resources this place has to offer? Because you're not doing it when you're cutting weight all the time.
Just do Conor McGregor-Nate Diaz 3 for the 165-pound title. You want to talk about a big fight? That's a big fight. Let's add some weight classes. Let's see more champion versus champion. Let's get some more two division champions.
I finish every fight. And if I don't finish and go to a decision, I win 10-8 rounds. How many guys do you know in the lightweight division who've had fights where they have gotten two 10-8 rounds scored? Think about it. I'm a winner.
I'm letting my coaches take the reins more. Letting them make the decisions on what's going to be a hard practice, what's not going to be a hard practice and also this weight cutting thing. It's the best decision I've made in my entire career.
I'm not here to be mediocre. I'm not in the UFC just to get a paycheck and make a living. That's really not what I'm here for. If I wanted to make money, I would have gotten out of the sport and done something else. I want to be a world champion.
I feel like a fight is a season. When you're in the UFC, one fight is the equivalent of a whole football season, so when you lose a fight, the fans only remember you from your last fight, so it's very important to perform well, and to keep winning.
I'm the type of guy where I feel like if you throw me in against the guy that's gonna be my hardest match-up, I think that's gonna bring out the best in me, and I know that the best of me can beat anybody on any given day to become the world champion.
With Masvidal, I dropped him and it's the first time I'd ever dropped anyone in my life. I kind of started to turn the corner after that, and it was just a realization that if my hands were a weakness, it was only because I didn't believe in them. I had the talent to do it.
I get a pit in my stomach every time I think of that last attempt to make 155 for the Anthony Pettis fight. I just get this nasty feeling in my stomach, because no exaggeration, that was one of the scariest moments of my life. I remember that I couldn't stop my body from shaking.
170 is not a popularity contest. 170 is a working man's weight class where you work hard, you get your rewards whereas at lightweight, it wasn't the same. You could work as hard as you want, win as many fights as you want, and there's no promise what you're going to get out of it.
I am a nerd about this sport. I know guys' records, who they fought, how they win, who they're married to, where they eat dinner, what kind of car do they drive. I'm a big nerd of the sport, so it would be easy for me to sit in front of a table of guys and just talk about fighting.
I don't think people realize what those weight cuts were doing to me. It took so much out of me to make 155. I wish I could put into words what it was like, to be able to paint the picture of my weight cuts, but I can't. All I can say is that every fight week was a complete misery.
If you're gonna get punched in the face, elbowed, cut up, busted up, injured, have to cut weight, have to bring yourself to the brink of death to show up the next day and try to put on the performance of your life, you've gotta love it. And if I don't love it, it's just not worth it to me.
When you train outside of camp, it's fun, I'm playing around, I'm working hard but I'm having fun. When I get into that camp it's 10 weeks of tunnel vision on that opponent, you're trying to work on your strengths and weaknesses, really trying to get better in different areas before the fight.
When I first got into the sport it was all about who could cut the most weight, who could be the biggest on fight night. That's the same era when you're sparring 10 five minute rounds, new partner every two and a half minutes, that era of just really hard weight cutting and really hard full contact training.