I've never been one to shy away from a challenge and I've never been one to shay away from talking a big game.
Aljamain Sterling
You can't keep a star from shining and my star's going to shine bright.
If you're a sports fan and you're home and you're washing dishes, usually your TV is on ESPN and you're just getting the highlights and keeping up-to-date with all of the sports going around, all of the news.
Jose Aldo's a legend. He accomplished many great things in his lifetime.
The mind has to be right and the work has to match the mind.
You gotta do what you gotta do to win, so I don't really get to play around as much.
It's MMA, man, the wild, wild west. You can just expect that anything can happen, and that's just where I'm at with things.
I know some people count me out, but that's the one thing about myself, I never count myself out.
I've been the captain of my wrestling team, my college team, so to me, I've been in that leadership role for a very long time.
You just take your hits on the chin and move on, that's life.
Fighters don't just fight. Not the good ones who have long, long success. The guys who make championship runs. The guys who fight for world titles. They get fizzled out, chewed up and spit out like a revolving door and then the next guy or the next female comes in to take their spot.
Obviously, I rep Jamaica. I'm a first generation born Jamaican-American. My parents are born and raised in Jamaica, my grandparents are born and raised in Jamaica, my other family still lives in Jamaica, and I still go back there.
Being a wrestler, it can get rough in terms of your mindset, just having that mentality embedded in you where you just wanna go, go, go, 100 miles per hour, always redlining your body and never actually taking the time out to let your body recover the right way. As I got older, I started to realized that less sometimes is more.
I think they need to start doing cageside weigh-ins again. I think that's the best way to go if you really want to see some difference. Cageside weigh-ins; I guarantee you won't see people cutting more than five to eight pounds, and they'll be fighting closer to their natural weight class.
You don't have to get into, 'I'm a leftist or a rightist, I'm Democrat or Republican.' You don't have to get into that kind of nitty gritty type of detail, but at the same time to show that you do have a stance is very, very important. To preach the good word of just being a good human being, being a humanitarian.
I think I bring a different flavor to the game, both inside and outside the Octagon.
At the end of the day, Cejudo's a tough competitor but I think he's a flyweight.
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.
If you don't stick out then how do you expect to be remembered? I want to be one of those guys who is actually remembered.
I think it's huge to set a good example. Whether you like it or not, as a professional athlete you are always going to be projected out into that spotlight of judgement. People are always going to judge every single thing we do and I think it's cool to just be real with yourself.
You only get 15 minutes to work and show your art and everything can you do. At the end of the day, it's a fight.
I never wish ill will saying 'I wish this guy won or this guy lost.' I really don't care. The best guy, let them have their night.
It's a little bit of a shame when I see some fans saying, 'Can you do me a favor and not ask questions to the fighters or the athletes about political stuff, cause we don't care about their opinions, we don't want to hear that, this is not that platform, if we wanted to hear that we would turn to CNN or FOX or ABC,' or whatever the case may be.
I've had negative experiences with cops. I've had positive experiences with cops.
I hope we can figure out the reforms, educate and really retrain our police officers. Getting people to understand that just because I grew up a different way and my lifestyle's different, doesn't mean that you need to be afraid of me.
Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of being paid like NBA, NFL and soccer and baseball athletes. They have that cushion where they can kind of hang out. Even the guys on the bench. But for us, we don't fight, we don't get paid and that's the scary reality to it all.
A lot of guys think you're almost supposed to just get stuff but you've got to put in the work, you've got to lay the foundations.
Just like any other job, you want a raise you've got to put in the work and you've got to show that you're deserving and what you bring to the table and all kinds of other stuff to show that you're worthy of so and so pay scale.
You might be an elite-level athlete in the room, but if no one gets to see you display your craft it doesn't matter.
I would never want to sell a fight based on stuff about race. That's not the type of person that I am. I would never go that route to push a fight.
It's almost out of sight out of mind because there's so many cards. One great fight could happens one weekend and another great fight happens next weekend, you kind of get swallowed up in that pack. So you have to find a way to separate yourself and what better way to do that than on ESPN?
It's all about brand exposure, building your brand, building your image and just getting to that next level as an athlete.
Petr Yan's a tough dude.
My whole thing is I can't wait to inspire the next young fighters from my hometown.
I've got personality. And I can actually fight. I think that combination alone sells.
A lot of guys man, they are dull and dry.
If I'm only fighting once or twice a year, that's just not going to be enough to make a dent in the sport or enough financially for me to get myself to where I want to be and position myself.
This is the weirdest thing. I've been told one thing, that all these guys turned me down, x,y, z. I take to Twitter and some of these guys are like, 'Yeah, I'll take the fight,' then you don't hear anything of it for the next few weeks.
I'm like, 'Man, if I'm going to have this idle time, I might as well be in school, do something positive where I'm not just wasting my prime years and not getting something else in return.' If I'm in school and training, that's OK. I did that in college. It worked.
People can say the media stuff drains you and everything, but you set everything up accordingly to the schedule.
I lost as amateur, I lost a bunch of times as a wrestler, and you always come back.
You show your teeth more when you show what you're made of and your heart.
About this sport, you gotta kind of stay active. If you're not active, you're easily forgotten. It's like out of sight, out of mind.
I want to have a bank account that represents me being a pro athlete.
Whether it's Bellator, OneFC, World Series, whatever, the door's open for me. Financial stability is the most important thing for me.
To be in the UFC and have the name but not the earnings, good for you, you get a hand clasp and a shake and a don't let the door hit you on the way out sort of thing.
I want to exit from this sport with my head intact.
At the end of the day, I know what I bring to the table.
You go out there and say I fight for the UFC, people know exactly what that is.
You cant really put a value on the UFC name. That alone has value in itself.
