You have to work your way up the ladder just like everybody else. Nothing is given to you in this world, so you have to work hard.
Cain Velasquez
I think you learn a lot from losses.
I'm not a boxer.
Coaches would have me in the gym do 1,000 kicks for a practice. I would do them until everyone was gone, until I had done all my kicks. People asked me why I would do it - that's stupid. But my coach told me to do something like that, and I knew it would benefit me, and I would do it.
I don't really care who I fight as long as it's the better guy.
If you lose, what can you do to get better and learn from it?
Personally, most of my injuries were ones that I sustained during fights in the UFC, not in practice.
I'd like to give some attention to my family, hang out with them for a little while. They definitely deserve it.
Let me be clear: MMA training is tough work, and every fighter has had to enter the Octagon with aches and pains as well as exhaustion. This is the game.
In training, I felt like my body would switch one way, but my leg would kind of stay in one direction. So I kind of felt like it wasn't stable.
I think of all my fights as title fights. I don't think about what can come up afterwards.
You just have to fight the perfect fight to win. You have to have a game plan and follow it. You have to develop every time you go out there and keep getting better.
I will be the first to say when I know I can't fight due to injury, as my long-term health is my number one priority.
I'm not really too big of a sports fan. Everything I watch is MMA, you know, great fights. But other sports, not really too much.
This whole thing is - our window to be able to fight and make money is very short. It's a short window to be able to take advantage of this and make as much money as we can and save it for the future. When you're not fighting, and the money's not coming in, you can't do that, and that's the part that sucks about this job.
I'm really proud of my coaches and the people I have training with me.
That's how fighters get better. They watch film, and they work on what they need to work on.
I just want to fight and not talk too much.
My life is calm. Once I get home from practice, I just want to spend time with my family.
I have the Mexican blood. I'm proud to be Mexican.
When I train, I train well.
Know what your strengths are, but also keep in mind what your weaknesses are; always work on your weaknesses.
I'm still in the gym every day for training, putting in the same hard work every week. That's the only way I know how to do it.
In wrestling, I was always competing against bigger guys.
I represent hardworking people. That's who raised me. That's who I grew up around.
I know I can eat a lot. Normally, at home, I finish my steak, eat the rest of my fiancee's steak, and think about eating the two that are still left on the grill. I just can't stop eating.
I never go into a fight thinking, 'I have to finish this guy' - that's not a part of my game plan. I go out there and fight the way I fight.
Hard work and sacrifice can get you a long way.
Not being active, your name doesn't go out there as much, and you lose the popularity thing. Also, you're not able to make a living. This is what we do to make a living: we go out there and fight. Not being able to fight for a year and a half and not able to bring in money, it definitely sets you back.
There's nobody better than me, especially Junior Dos Santos.
You can't dwell on the past and be down on yourself because you lost. You have to take the positive away from it and see how you can improve yourself moving forward.
MMA is so exciting. It doesn't matter if you know the rules or not. If you like a fight, it's automatically gonna draw you in.
I just deal with what's at hand.
Wrestling has made me very mentally strong, conditioned me really well for MMA, and given me phenomenal balance.
Obviously, throwing leg kicks in the first round is not smart, but it's something that I can really utilize in the later rounds to both score points and look to finish the fight.
Heath Herring is tough as nails, and he fights hard.
For me, 240 is my target weight.
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've always loved competing; I've always loved working out - and wrestling, of course.
I don't think about being undefeated; I don't think about what people say in the media about me, whether it's good or bad. I just don't think of it.
Do I think my wrestling is the best? No, I think it's up there around the top.
Growing, up I didn't really have anyone to look up to. There weren't a lot of Mexicans on T.V. except for those in boxing.
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.
Once I started wrestling, I really got into it, and I just knew that I wanted to do that - I wanted to wrestle all the way through college.
For every new guy, you need to change a few things in the way you train, the way you take every fight. For every guy I train for, I prepare differently and learn new things, and I just keep them. That's why it's good to be fighting new people, because you add new things to your arsenal and keep getting better and better all the time.
All I can tell you is I'm going to be myself. I'm not the type of person that is going to develop into some character or come up with some phrase I will always say.
I'm going to be the best fighter I can be and focus on being me.
Don't bad-mouth me and then try to be my friend.
I grew up watching my parents work in the fields. That's where I get my work ethic from, because I saw them work hard my whole life.
There is always a possibility that you could lose, because the outcome isn't written yet: you have to go out and write it. If you want it bad enough, if you do the training and prepare yourself to succeed, and do everything in your power to win, you'll have a better chance of succeeding.
