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All the losses that I had, I think they were important, just because it helped me grow as a fighter, helped me grow as a person.
I pretty much focus on all the main styles out there, karate, wrestling, boxing, jiujitsu, just pretty much anything within MMA.
Having a chance to fight for a title is a once-in-a-lifetime chance, and I consider myself to be very lucky that I got two chances.
I didn't grow up with my father in my life, and that bred a resentment in me, and it bred a mentality in me that made me very angry.
Sometimes it doesn't always say Niagara Falls there, but you better believe, I represent Niagara Falls every time I step in the octagon.
You never know yourself until the chips are down. True strength is not measured when your at your strongest, but when you’re at your weakest.
I wanted to play football, and my football coach told me if I wanted to be a football player, I should wrestle. That's why I started to wrestle.
Being a great fighter is having a perfect balance of having that toughness, skill, as well as that mental capability to be able to out-think you opponent.
When I go in and fight, I'm not the same guy who is sitting in front of you, who is meeting the fans or anything like that. It's like a split personality.
MMA embodies a lot of disciplines of sports with footwork and with football, especially with the punching technique you get the hand and eye coordination.
For the last 14 years or so, I've been a fighter for so long I kind of forgot what it's like to not have this as my biggest form of expression of who I am.
The results of anything are equal to how persistent you are with it, so if you're persistent and dedicate yourself to working out, you'll get bigger results.
We are all fighters, every single person who walks this earth is a fighter, everything that lives. To live is to fight. And we just fight in different arenas.
But if you look at a fight, it is anything but comfortable. So when you're fighting tough guys and you're not willing to go out of your comfort zone, you lose.
I was just so rambunctious as a little kid. It started because I hung out with my older brothers and their friends. I always had to fight to prove I was tough.
Keith Jardine pushes me the hardest because we're in the same weight class and we get competitive with each other, we make sure we're in shape and ready to compete.
Of course I expect to be booed. People always have to find the bad guy, and for some reason, the look on my face or something, people just want to boo me. That's fine.
Eric Knuutila was one of those coaches who I could tell who cared, who went the extra mile, who made sure that it wasn't just about getting me on the mat and wrestling.
All the trials and tribulations have paid off. In life, you have setbacks...When you're in your valley, that's when you're tested the most -not when you're at your peak.
One thing you understand quickly as a fighter is that you're not punching with eight or 10 oz. Gloves. We've got 4 oz. gloves. It only takes one good shot for a fight to be over.
I've been working on my ground game, my jiu jitsu, and my standup as well. Those are areas where I feel like really needs to be cleaned up and areas I know that I can get better.
I've had some real hard setbacks in this sport and I learned to realize that you can't really build who you are on what people say. That's ultimately building your foundation in sand.
When I fight, part of the swagger that I had when I used to fight on the street comes out. When I fought on the street, I used to try to embarrass someone for even wanting to fight me.
I like to have a lot of time to be able to format what I want to do, and how I'm going to do my training camp. When you're doing a camp on short notice, it makes everything else suffer.
I'm open to fighting at 185 or 205 pounds, but I think I need to give this 185-pound run a real, honest crack. Being at this weight class has definitely made me into a different fighter.
For me I think the pressure Chael Sonnen brings is hard to match with his offense, takedowns, ground and pound, hand in the face and dropping elbows and shots. It kind of wears down a fighter.
There's a lot of reasons I didn't perform the way I could have in college. Going to college, I was a new parent, I lived in another state. I just wasn't mentally into it when I was in college.
I didn't really realize that I could make it into a career until midway through the 'Ultimate Fighter' show when I started beating guys who had been training in the sport for a really long time.
The hardest thing in the world is to watch someone you love really not be able to get themselves together and really struggle on a level so bad when it seems and it appears that they have it all.
I never want to get content. I never want to think that I'm at a certain spot and I'm gonna stay there, because this organization's hard to stay in, and this is the wrong place to get complacent in.
A lot of people are lazy when it comes to making up their own mind about something, you know? If you're labelled one way then they think thats how you are. It takes too much time to really look into things.
Yeah, I miss that feeling of knocking somebody clean out. There's nothing like it when you go into a fight and you just take 'em up out of there with just one punch. It's just the best feeling in the world.
I kind of did mixed martial arts as a hobby. At the time I was actually wanting to become a police officer as I was working in a hospital as a security job in Michigan. It was something I did in my off time.
I believe I can beat Anderson Silva, and I believe that the skills that I have is something he'd have hard time dealing with, but to compete against the guy, first and foremost, would be an honor in and of itself.
I really worked hard to get myself in shape, just from a physical standpoint when you're able to bring your body down and have the discipline to get into shape the way I was, it's really a spiritual journey as well.
It's sad because I worked so hard to be able to provide for my kids and give them a better life than I ever had for myself but I can't give them the one thing which they really need more than anything, and that's me.
It's like when your parents tell you what to do, but it's not until you go through it yourself that you see why they said what they said. Sometimes you just have to go through things in life to become a better person.
Everyone's talking about Phil Davis and what he did in college. It's an accomplishment to win an NCAA title. I don't want to discredit that. But I believe if I would have wrestled him in college, I would have beat him.
Before a fight I'm always afraid... before I used to have a hard time just dealing with it because I would try to run away from it, but then as I competed more I understood the fact that this is how I'm supposed to feel.
True wealth is not measured by how much money you've got in the bank or how many toys you've got. Some of the happiest people in the world don't have a crying quarter, but they've got all the things that mean a lot to them.
I am a student of whoever I can learn from. I don't see myself in position like I'm above anybody else and I can never learn, or no one can ever teach me anything. You learn a lot from guys who are just starting off sometimes.
I grew up so poor and now I have an opportunity to provide for my family in a way that I never imagined. I take that in consideration and try to exploit every single opportunity because when it's over it's over, there are no redos.
I took so many years off my fighting career arguing with Dana, trying to get a fight with Shogun Rua, not trying to fight this guy, trying to do all this stuff. At the end of the day, it didn't really matter much. I just lost time.
Jon has always been able to start off at a certain pace but then pick it up throughout the fight and then, at the end of the fight, his opponents are like, 'Damn, this guy is at another level.' I think that's what makes Jon Jones, Jon Jones.
I'm not really too worried about the mystique of Jon Jones. Because I know Jon Jones' core. I remember when Jon Jones used to come up to me and say, 'Hey man, what's it like when everybody wants to take pictures with you?' So I know Jon Jones.
I remember the first time I fought somebody with a name and that was Tito Ortiz. I didn't start fighting until like the second round because I was like, 'Oh my God, that's Tito Ortiz. That's Tito Ortiz from TV. Look how big his head is, damn.'
It was really difficult being away from MMA because it's been a way of life for me for 13 years. But being on the outside and coaching helps you sharpen your skills because you have to explain what you do, why things work and why other things don't.
You've got so many guys coming up and putting in work, and everybody wants to be in my position, so I gotta be paranoid and think that if I'm not producing, if I'm not going out there and winning fights and winning impressively, I'm gonna be replaced.
I come from nothing. Growing up I didn't really have too much, and I can tap into that anytime that I want to and just remember how bad things were for me growing up and just knowing that I never want to go back there and I don't want my kids to go through it.
Working at the hospital, there was a lot of starchy food. I was in good with the lunch lady, so she would hook me up with all kinds of macaroni and cheese and potatoes and that kind of food. I would eat it all night to the part where I hated food. I got pretty big.