I've read a lot of books on the laws of attraction, and in my home, I have a big book on Muhammad Ali, which I've read because he is, like, a hero of mine, but other than that, no, I'm not a big reader.

In one line of his poem he said good fences make good neighbors. I'd like to think that Alaska and British Columbia working together can prove that we can be pretty darned good neighbors without fences.

I felt like my job is to go out there and put on a good show, amazing fights and give an amazing effort and hope that people can recognize that sort of thing, and maybe they would want to find out more.

Everyone likes to be the heel. Everyone wants to be the bad guy. I mean, I love being the bad guy, but the crowd doesn't want me to be a bad guy. In real life, I'm too much of a good guy to be a bad guy.

I never stopped training. You know, I stopped fighting. When I was injured, when I lost my husband, I stopped when I needed to take the break. But I never stopped training because training is my therapy.

A cockroach can’t defeat a dinosaur. But the cockroach is better at one thing, and it has ensured its survival through the ages: Adaptation. One could adapt to the environment and the other one couldn’t.

I take it so seriously as far as meditation, notes, visualization, preparation, everything. I take it a lot more serious than a lot of people that play this sport. I'm obsessed with the game that I play.

Being able to fight a guy like Brock Lesnar who is a wrestler, who has very limited skills in striking, in my prime and him in his prime, he doesn't have a chance. How can you beat me? You can't beat me.

A lot of people get up to the top of the pile, maybe get one No. 1 contender match-up, and if they lose, they drift into obscurity. I lost, and I went back a bit. But I built myself back up. Three times.

I fought for, like, five years in Hawaii - nothing better than that. It was awesome. Every fight, I went on vacation, and I wasn't cutting any weight, so I could just eat whatever I wanted. I enjoyed it.

That's the thing I'm worst at: resting. I have to be forced to do it. Sometimes I think of loopholes. 'Oh, I'm just going for a walk, up a dune that's 45 degrees, but I'm walking, so it's not a workout.'

I used to be in a street fight at least twice a week, so locking me in a cage with somebody, with a set of rules and a referee to jump in if something get ugly, and a time limit, like, it don't scare me.

For me, to make a living off of working out is a dream for me. I don't know, I really can't be in an office and stuff like that. I want to do something that I love, and training, that's what motivates me.

There's still times I wish I could throw on the black and gold singlet and go out there in the Hearnes Center and wrestle for the Missouri Tigers. I miss that and I miss the stuff about college wrestling.

I’m American. I can’t stand Brazilians. They live in a third-world country anyway, so they’ll go anywhere if there’s a little money. I live in America. I want to be a champion of an American organization.

When you are on the ground, only one of you two can be comfortable at any one time. Either you are comfortable or the opponent is. Your job is to transfer the comfortable from him to you in every position

For me, I think you can coach guys in martial artsm, and wrestling can be one aspect of it, but I have no desire to be an NCAA wrestling coach again. It was one of the worst coaching jobs I have ever had.

This level of competition is extremely high. Everybody is trained. Everybody has a game plan. Everybody has a nutritionist. Everybody has everything. It's here that you realize, as people, we're all equal.

We have no one to stand up for the fighters' rights. If something bad were to happen, no one backs him, and it's just him alone, and everything gets washed out. We need people to stand up and fight for it.

I've experienced success, I've experienced failure, I've been a world champion, I've fought all over the world; I think I've experienced enough that I won't get in front of a million people and get gunshy.

Fighting, for me, is not a career - it's an opportunity. I'm going to take full advantage of it and do it as long as I can. As long as my body lets me and I'm healthy enough to do it naturally, I'll do it.

If I can put the right guy with the right mouthpiece in front of the right opponents, we can build a champion, but he doesn't really have to beat the best guys; we just have to give him the right matchups.

I had two ACL injuries in my life, and both of them happened when I was training with bigger guys; a heavyweight and a light heavyweight. Sometimes it's not even because the guy is good, you just get hurt.

I've lost my share in the pen. I don't keep track, but I've won much more than I've lost. Since I was released almost one year ago, I've gone 9-1. My only loss was to a punk that brought mace to the dance.

Finishing a guy like Benson Henderson, who hasn't been finished since for six years, the guy doesn't get finished and I finished it with a switch-step switch to Southpaw, knocked him out with my left hand.

With boxing, sometimes you'll watch the first three rounds, then you'll change the channel and turn it back in the 10th round. With MMA, you have to watch all 15 minutes. You'll want to watch every second.

When you go into MMA you really can't do it half-assed. If you do it half-assed, then you're going to get annihilated. You're going to get destroyed out there: there are some really good fighters out there.

Your security is determined by your ability to define what it is you do that has value. The clearer you can be on what it is you do well and what provides value for someone else, the more security you have.

I've had ups and downs in my career, and if you look at it as a bookmaker, the odds of me becoming a world champion were never in my favour, but I never stopped believing in myself and never stopped trying.

I had a really hot girlfriend in high school and I'd get into fights over that. And by the time I got into high school, I was moved around into a lot of schools, so I was getting into fights in high school.

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.

To take what I have, they're going to have to have more than skill and technique. It's a lot of heart, a lot of determination. That's just who I am. I'm not messing around out there. I'm not giving it away.

Have fun, that's what it's all about. People get stressed over it... Let competition eat them up. That's not me, I just get in and have fun. That's what I'm here to do: Have fun and make some money doing it.

I'm not going to get somewhere and say, 'OK, I'm done.' Success is never final; I'll just keep on going. The same way as failure never being fatal. Just keep going. I'm going to the stars and then past them.

One of the keys to learning for me has been to not get so hung up on the past. It's important to remember the past, but that doesn't mean you have to torture yourself with it by reliving it every single day.

If I could do this until I was 60, I would. This is a great life. All I do is train, all I do is work out, and prolong my life by the training that I'm doing, the things I have to do as professional athlete.

I'm the only person in this sport, for the most part, that ain't on steroids. Now there's new rules in effect, yeah, you've got guys not on steroids now, but they used to be. They've always been on steroids.

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 focus on making sure I'm sharp, and it doesn't matter who I am fighting. I need to perform at my best and try to elevate my game to the highest level I possibly can, so that is what I concentrate on doing.

We're in a very individual sport, but they like us not to be so individual. They'd rather have you look like every other cookie cutter guy and have you believe that you're replaceable when you're really not.

I think the fans are human, and they have their own mind. If someone doesn't like a person because of their skin color, it doesn't matter if you fight or you deliver mail; they're going to have that opinion.

I apologize to all my fans. I ask for your prayers for a successful surgery and healthy body. I will be back in shape to fight again and to give you more excitement. A big hug for all of you and be with God.

For many athletes, an injury can mean the end of a relationship with a sponsor. XYIENCE stood behind me in my time of victory and they continued to do so when I became injured. This means a great deal to me.

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.

Success is never an accident. It typically starts as imagination, becomes a dream, stimulates a goal, grows into a plan of action - which then inevitably meets with opportunity. Don't get stuck along the way.

We're also fairly stubborn, I think, fairly independent. We have our share of difficulties with our federal government, although I've tried to as I am here encourage a better way of discussing those problems.

If we fought like the old days, with no time limit, it would be better to work. We only have five minutes to work per round so it's complicated, especially because everybody knows that my ground game is good.

There are two kinds of people who do martial arts: those who practice a thousand different kicks one time each, and those who practice one kick a thousand times minimum. You can guess which group I belong to.

Due to the UFC educating people on MMA as a sport, people give us the respect as athletes, opening doors to opportunities which wasn't available in the past. It has been amazing to be part of the UFC journey.

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