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You win a world title, you beat the best guys in the world, and a lot of these fans are kind of misconstrued about who are the best fighters in the world.
It's long been a problem. But I'm not just talking about the UFC - I mean homophobia in sports in general and athletes sometimes say really stupid things.
I like to make people quit. Whether it's because I'm striking them or submitting them, I just want to make them quit. In the war of wills, that's the win.
My father was a bricklayer, and my mother was a housewife. It was complicated, obviously, because of our humble origin, but thank God we were all focused.
The belt will grow dust and sit on the mantelpiece, but it's not about the belt. It's about how I can be as a father, as a human being that matters to me.
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.
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.
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.
If you do not speak up when it matters, when would it matter that you speak? The opposite of courage is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.
There have always been people who have written me off. They're not going away. I use that to motivate me. I'm driven to show them just how wrong they are.
Most people get scared away from having an opinion. It's not so much my opinions everybody relates to, it's that I don't care about being punished for it.
I punish the guy until the referee pulls me off or until he says 'no more,' and he taps. I don't want to leave any doubt in his mind that he had a chance.
When you're watching people in non-title fights making four times the amount of money that a champion makes, it takes away the flavor of being a champion.
When you get put in a position like that, to shave off the hair of the boss of the company, they're putting a lot of faith in you, and they believe in you.
When Georges St-Pierre retired and Jon Jones was absent, I had Jose Aldo, the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in the world. That's how highly I think of him.
I see a lot of people try to come out and copy me, duplicate me, and give it the old college try, but at the end of the day, there's only one Chael Sonnen.
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.
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 said I could beat Alexander Gustafsson in a standup fight, people laughed at me. They thought, 'No way.' But I believe in what I'm seeing every day.
The striking game is always a lottery game, so I prefer to take the safe situation. Submission is the best for me. I'm the guy looking for it all the time.
I'll be the first one to tell you that I'm fat out of season. I love McDonald's, and I love Taco Bell. But, whenever it comes fight time, I'm always ready.
I've had to take out a couple of loans; I'm not gonna lie. I want to pay off my debts. I want to start stacking some cash and set myself up for the future.
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.
I definitely get down on myself. I needed to work on my self-talk. The same way you do footwork drills and cardio training, I had to do self-talk training.
Wouldn't you love to see Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield go one more time? It's not like just one of them has aged. They've both aged. They're both icons.
We also have to think as fighters, celebrities - whatever you want to call us - that we have an obligation to point out stuff that's just completely wrong.
I'm just going to go out there, pop on my leather gloves, and constantly make connections outside the Octagon, and that will make me bigger in the Octagon.
To be just straight up honest, Conor McGregor is a guy that fought at 145 - ever in his life. I haven't weighed 145 since my sophomore year of high school.
The main thing I learned in San Diego was I can't do this and compete with the best guys in the world if I'm just doing MMA as a hobby. It has to be my job.
Partnering with MetroPCS is a great opportunity for me. It's great to be partnered with a company that serves a consumer similar to the UFC and my fan base.
Sometimes I look at my opponent, and I resent them because of the time I miss with my son by having to train for them, and that gives me even more strength.
A lot of people are blowing Shogun's fight with Mark Coleman out of proportion. He was coming off an injury, and he gassed early on in his first fight back.
Guys play basketball and get hurt, and that's probably the easiest sport on the planet. We're actually fighting every day. We're wrestling; we're grappling.
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.
The business aspect of this sport is a contradiction to what it's really about, and that's knowing something for what it is and not just what it looks like.
I've convinced myself I'm something special. When you do that, man, you're dangerous, especially when you have the athleticism and work ethic to back it up.
In karate, there's a lot of respect. In fact, when an opponent accepts to fight me, he's giving me a chance to show my work, so I can't diminish him at all.
I can't say 'OK, let's begin to exchange and see where it goes.' We want to give a fight and give people a good show, but you have to play on a safety zone.
I'm not gonna waste my money watching two cheaters fight. Why would I? They're cheaters, in the end. That's basically all they are. They should get nothing.
There's something so zen-like and grateful of just ripping a hot wing apart and getting it all over your face, and everyone's happy. I love that atmosphere.
A lot of people out there are bullies, and they pick on people and call people names. You need to grow up from that, and you need to become a better person.
I went through UFC with five title defenses. Jonny 'Bones' Jones beat my record, so I'm trying to beat his record. That's my goal. That's what I want to do.
I want to be remembered as a fighter with integrity. A fighter who did it this way, who has respect because he wanted to push the envelope for the fighters.
I want to leave a legacy behind. I want the chance to measure myself against the top guys and to have them bring out that champion within me in the Octagon.
Living the dream is simply a form of living out your passion, of making that passion gradually, through persistence and effort, a central part of your life.
We have to start encouraging people to step out of their comfort zones and start doing new things. Anything anybody does new, there are a bunch of naysayers.
Every Mexican fighter has the heart; they work hard with their training, and they never give up. That's the mentality I always had and always saw growing up.
I've done what I could as far as getting physically healthy after my knee injury, and I've done what I could to get mentally healthy after losing my husband.
If I had nothing to do and I wanted to sit in a dark room and relax, I could at times. But to be busy is very nice. To have things to do and have a schedule.