Reach, and all that other stuff, doesn't play as big a part in MMA as it does in boxing. Guys don't really fight with their length all that much, because they have to worry about the takedown or kicks. They have to worry about so many other things that they can't just fight real tall.

I've won not just in MMA but also for the US and let me tell you, the US Greco Roman wrestler is never the guy that's the favorite, not overseas. I'm used to going into hostile countries and competing against the number one guy in their country instead of the number one guy in Chicago.

A lot of people are like, "What do you do to get pumped up for a fight?" Like, really? You're locked in a cage with someone trying to kill you in front of thousands of people. It's not too hard to get pumped up... You've got to calm everything down, you've got to remind yourself to relax.

I guess you could say I fell into it. The main goal was to be successful and to make my family proud. Back then, MMA was just getting started, and there didn't seem to be a ton of rules. It seemed pretty brutal, and I was still pretty focused on wrestling. But I decided to give it a shot.

The level of difficulty in most areas of MMA is very high. It's a high learning curve. The footwork in boxing alone takes years to master. I will rely heavily on my amateur wrestling to get out of bad situations and take me from defense to offense. I'll try to dictate the fight on my terms.

I know he's not an MMA fighter, but can we just talk about how great Deontay Wilder is? He's must-see TV. Not since Mike Tyson has boxing had an American heavyweight who could hit like him... and talk like him, too. I love his interviews, his demeanor, his fighting style... the whole package.

When I looked at the state of women's MMA, what I saw was that it was missing rivalries or anything theatrical about it. Everybody was trying to be Miss America, unwilling to go under any kind of criticism, and taking the safe answers. I thought I needed to do whatever I could to get attention.

When I went to college, I came across MMA. My first reaction was, 'No, I don't want to fight. I just want to learn jujitsu.' I didn't know what UFC was; in my mind it was this violent, ugly sport. But when I watched my first amateur fight, I fell in love with the sport and thought it was beautiful.

Aang is an Airbender, and he became the Avatar after the last one died. He has to realize his destiny as the Avatar by mastering all of the elements - earth, fire and air. For me, I feel like I'm mastering all the different styles or elements of MMA. It's my destiny to become the Avatar of this game.

It's kinda like Hulk Hogan whereas any time Hogan walks into a room, he's got that distinctive look. Everybody, whether you're a wrestling fan or not, you know who he is. Chuck has that same thing. Whether you're an MMA fan or not, he'll walk into a room and everyone goes, 'Oh, that's Chuck Liddell.'

Some people believe I have an automatic advantage over other female MMA fighters, so they think 'well she has to be stronger, because she used to be a male,' but if they look into the science of it and what the hormones do to the body, to the male body once taken over a period of time... it dissipates.

When your purpose and your occupation is giving confidence to people, teaching self defense, giving empowerment, teaching a positive lifestyle to other people, you tend to emit that yourself because you want to live what you preach and you want to preach what you live, and I'm just trying to do my best.

I think we have tremendous media covering the sport of boxing, even if boxing is a little bit lost in popularity with MMA sports. And I think that with the show 'Lights Out' it's going to get more attention to the sport, and it's going to put more attention to the problems that athletes in general have.

I feel like karma is something that's real. I try and be the best possible person I can be, but not only that I try to help as many people as possible and influence others in a positive manner. And that's all stuff brought on by MMA because I want to be successful so want to be the best possible person.

MMA is pretty tough on your mind because it's a sport that's not just about winning. You really want to win bad, but it's tough when you lose. You get beaten. And it really messes with your ego, because nobody wants to get beaten by other people physically. It's not just a game. You get beaten physically.

I think a lot of people miss what I've done in the MMA world. How I was able to market and control the industry so that people wanted to watch my fights. If you look at the fights I've been involved in - in the SEG UFC, in Japan, for Zuffa and today, they have been fights that have turned companies around.

Using your imagination to create mental images stimulates your mind, helps organize your life and keeps your focus in a particular direction. It allows your unconscious mind to work toward the image you have created, the goal. It's about understand the life you want to live, and seeing it unfold before you.

Even when I teach my MMA classes in the gym, it's hard to teach what I do. It's more of state of flow, a state of feel. It's not a robotic thing like one, two, three, kick, one, two, three, switch, jab, cross. It's completely unorthodox. Everything is about rhythm, tempo and pace. It's a different style, man.

MMA is not one of those up and down basketball seasons where you have a ton of games and you can still make the playoffs. It doesn't work like that in MMA. You get a couple losses, you get washed up, you get the door slammed behind you and they bring in the next person behind you who is here to take your place.

I trained in martial arts and wanted to become a UFC fighter. That was my goal. I only really learned how to dance three weeks prior to making 'Step Up Revolution.' Dancing will always be fun, but MMA is something I'll never give up. I will eventually get back in the octagon and be fighting professionally again.

I am Jack Swagger. My background, it's there for the world to see, and you look at MMA today, you look at boxing today, you look at professional kickboxing today, you need that entertainment value. You want people to relate to you as a character, as a personality. Honestly, that's what they're going to remember.

Fighters are raised into MMA. It's more about what's internal, not what's God given. When you have a great fighter like Rickson Gracie or Fedor Emelianenko-they're greater than the others because they have an internal spiritual being that separates them from the rest in their craft. They have the warrior spirit.

A fight is a fight. And life is a fight. No matter how many fights you have under your belt, it will continue to be a learning experience. And you can never prepare yourself for every scenario. Awkward, odd, and difficult situations will always present themselves. You just have to stay cool and work through them.

I got to fight the greatest-of-all-time in my weight division - not once but twice. I was watching this guy when I was 16 years old when I first started kickboxing. I wanted to fight Aldo in a kickboxing match. A couple years later, I came to MMA and wanted to fight him. 10 years later, I got to fight the man twice.

I was in my junior year of high school and I had been playing soccer and basketball almost my entire life, and I wanted a change of pace. I wanted to do something more, something different. That's when I found an MMA gym about 45 minutes from my house and fell in love with the idea of becoming a professional fighter.

Of course, you've got Lyoto Machida. He's definitely a karate guy and he's made a big presence in MMA. I would say look up Lyoto Machida. There are some other karate guys who are phenomenal at what they do at their karate game, the point fighting game, Raymond Daniels, who is an amazing point fighter and very flashy.

Everybody knows how to get prepared for an MMA fight. Everybody knows what the other person is going to do. Whereas when I did it, MMA was really style against style. Things you hadn't seen before, you'd see for the first time. People didn't know how to train properly for it, and the coaching wasn't there yet, either.

I started ballet in my early 20s. I studied for about ten years. Ballet is probably the one of the hardest things I've done, almost like MMA. People don't give it a lot of credit and think it's easy, but it's very difficult. For an athlete, you use muscles you really don't use, and ballet is something I really respect.

What got me into MMA first was that I was a wrestler, and I was a gangbanger getting into trouble a lot and getting into fights. I grew up in a family of 15 in a four-bedroom house. It was dysfunctional, so that alone made me want to be an MMA fighter. It's really the only sport where you gotta basically depend on yourself.

MMA's not like a game like basketball, for example, that if you're winning by 30, 40 points and there's just five minutes left, you can do whatever you want because the guy isn't going to beat you. In MMA, you can get beaten in the last minute of the fight, or the last second of the fight, so sometimes you've got to be safe.

While wrestling in college as a junior it came to a point where wrestling just wasn't enough for me anymore. I love wrestling, but I felt like I was missing something, and so the striking part about MMA, the boxing and kickboxing, was what got me really interested in MMA. I saw it on TV and I just knew that I wanted to do it.

I'm a shy guy... I don't enjoy being bothered but I never say no to a fan. I say yes to everybody... even though sometimes you have some days where you don't feel like it, but it's your duty as athlete to do it. Because the fans that pay it's going to make you live, so you have to do it. So I force myself to do it all the time.

When I head into the cage for an MMA fight, for that time inside the cage, I hate the person standing across the cage. I want to beat him up and beat him up to the point where he never wants to go against me again. After the fight, I can shake his hands, and he - we can be best friends. It's the same thing in professional wrestling.

You are one miniscule piece of a never-ending cycle. In fact, you're not even a piece. You're just a holder for billions and billions of other pieces. Whether that's organic components, living organisms inside your body, bacteria or whatever it is, you're just part of the soup of the universe, so just try to enjoy what's good about it.

Pardon me, not to sound elitist, but I wanted to put something together that I would enjoy. I thought at that time, what satiated me, what interested me, what intrigued me, I thought other people would like also. And you blend that with some forward thinking of predicting the UFC and MMA were going to be ultimately as big as it became.

I train twice a day and I make sure I eat right. I'm an avid tea drinker and I enjoy the benefits of drinking MateFit. It gives me energy, speeds up my metabolism and helps me shed excess water weight. I also do everything from MMA sparring to strength and conditioning. I make sure to do a combination of different things with my training.

I'd like to be remembered for being the one responsible for adapting Brazilian jiu-jitsu for modern MMA. For what I've learned from fence work and some ground positions. Lots of details I developed after years and years studying them, testing what worked on the mat, against the fence, what kept opponents on the ground, control situations.

Kelvin Gastelum, there's many ways I can classify his style. I like it. He's improved. One thing I can say is that he's improved over his run in the UFC from 'The Ultimate Fighter' and now being a contender. But his style? It's very Mexican. You have the Mexican style of boxing, and he has a Mexican style of MMA, like smart Mexican style.

Back when the UFC first started, I wanted to see what MMA was all about; at the time, I was training with Tank Abbott, and so I went to see him fight. While at the fight, I saw this guy fighting that I just crushed in high school wrestling, and I thought, 'Hey, I'm a street fighter, and I have a wrestling background,' so I gave it a shot.

I train twice a day, and I make sure I eat right. I'm an avid tea drinker, and I enjoy the benefits of drinking MateFit. It gives me energy, speeds up my metabolism and helps me shed excess water weight. I also do everything from MMA sparring to strength and conditioning. I make sure to do a combination of different things with my training.

I'll get out and do Pilates. I'll get in the ring and do some rounds of kickboxing and grappling and MMA conditioning. There's a lot of unique stuff that I do, too, that a lot of people wouldn't imagine or think about doing, like box jumps. You get a 42-inch box and dumbbells and practice working on your explosion jumping up on those boxes.

When you want to be a fighter, you have to give it everything you got. MMA just became who I am because of the amount of work I was putting into my training. It all starts in the gym. The hours turn into days, days into weeks, and weeks into months; it's like school - the more time you spend learning, the better you'll be prepared for a test.

The only guys that make it through are the guys that make it through are the guys that have a complete control of their ego where they tap out in the beginning, all the time, you're always losing in the beginning... Your ego can get bruised if you don't have control of it. So what ends up happens is Jiu Jitsu is the ultimate douchebag filter.

Let's be honest here - 99 percent of MMA fans haven't got a clue what's going on. They don't understand the game enough to comment on any of that. They don't know how easy it is to have an impressive record. I could have 10 guys in my gym tomorrow, beat them all up, and there's 10 wins for my record. It is that easy. It is that easy to be 10-0.

I had to wear a fat suit to play Mma Ramotswe in 'The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.' She's described as being like a small elephant, but she loves her body and size. When we were filming in Africa, it was 110F. It was torturous. I drank a lot of water and ate cucumbers all the time, and underneath the fat suit I shed pounds - I couldn't help it.

I did see the Yahoo Sports story Kevin Iole wrote about how the ratings for TUF go up when there's a women's fight in the episode. I can't lie: it felt really good to see that the UFC fans - not only MMA fans but fans of the UFC who maybe hadn't seen any female fights before February of this year - look forward to watching the women fights so much.

I wasn't always the most fashionable, and I would come to school with cauliflower ear and ringworm. I got made fun of a lot. People called me 'Miss Man' and 'Guns,' and people directed a lot of karate jokes at me. I wish that I was at school now that MMA and martial arts is cool, but back when I was in school, people associated it with nerdy stuff.

I realized a long time ago that instead of being jealous you can be inspired and appreciative. It carries more energy to you... That can be an awesome motivating force that can improve your life if you choose to be inspired and not jealous. One (being jealous) has no benefit whatsoever, the other is an incredible resource for creating momentum and improvement.

There's a very famous Miyamoto Musashi quote. "Once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things." The idea is once you understand what excellence is all about, whether it's in painting, or carpentry or martial arts, that you see how that excellence manifests itself in any discipline. I think that all the different things that I do enhance all the other things that I do.

My mentality is like a samurai they used to train every day, work on their technique to make themselves better, almost perfect, perfection is impossible but every day you get closer and that's what I want . Every day I want to get better than I was the day before. I want to use every second of my life, every time I have in my life to make me a better fighter. It's more than a job it's a way of living.

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