Anywhere I go, anywhere I fight it doesn’t matter who’s watching or whatever, it’s me fighting and there’s one guy in the cage you know, that I have to worry about and that’s it.
I’m a competitive guy. So when push comes to shove when I’m in the cage, I always push to my limits to get the victory because that’s who I am.
I don’t ever know the people I fight at all. I just know their name and I show up on the night, they show up, and we fight in a cage and we paid for it. That’s what we like to do.
When you’re walking out to the cage and fighting a guy like Vitor Belfort and you’ve got the crowd going crazy, most people would lose the fight right there and then. Since I’ve fought in a crowd that crazy and wild, I feel that nothing else is going to be like that.
I don’t think anybody in the world matches up with my skills. That’s just the way you’ve got to be when you step in the cage.
If you have the mentality that Jon Jones has when he steps into the cage, no one will beat you on the mat.
I’m going to leave it all out in the cage and know that I’m trying to finish my opponent, even knowing that most of my time it ain’t going to be a finish.
To beat Shevchenko, you’d have to close the distance and work with strikes close to the cage to take away her energy, her strength, and work with the ground and pound or something like that.
I had, in a way, become ‘The Nightmare’ in the cage, but also out of the cage. That’s why I changed to ‘The Dream.’ But ‘The Nightmare,’ is who I am as a fighter and that’s the way it’s going to stay. I’ll be a nightmare inside the cage and a dream outside of it.
A lot of people see M.M.A. as this violent cage fighting, and they don’t see it as being two athletes who have put so much time and energy and focus into it.
Once I experienced that loss to Miesha, I wanted to get back in the cage and show that it was just a mistake.
The thing is, against guys like GSP or Anderson Silva, many guys are beaten before they step into the cage.
I had the world’s greatest childhood. I used to hang around by the batting cage and have Hank Aaron ask me how my Little League team was doing.
My mother used to tell me, ‘I’m fake thin, but don’t tell anyone.’ I think part of her reputation for dieting too much was to do with her upper body and thoracic cage being thinner than average, thus her thin waist.
For sure I think the traditional martial arts is a good background to have and definitely allows me to do a lot different things inside the cage. My wrestling background definitely helps me out a lot, but I don’t think either one led directly to MMA.
I can always hear my fans shouting for me and I always get goosebumps walking to the cage wherever I fight. But once the cage door shuts I forget everything else around the world and I focus.
Everybody thinks they know me. They think I’m an easy fighter, but when cage door closes, they feel my power. I’m a completely different fighter. They’ve never fought against someone like me but they have to feel it on their skin.
My rivalry against Chandler – it was personal. On the same night he defeated my brother, he said he could beat my entire family. I made him pay for his words by knocking him out inside the cage in one minute.
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