I do a lot of crazy stuff. People that have watched me know my grappling game is of the regular map that you'd see in a jiu-jitsu class.
Shayna Baszler
I discover a lot of things on my own.
I was going to school; I was working - at one point, I had two jobs - and I was still trying to train and fight.
Because I've been around the MMA block a little bit, I'm at a point now where I just want bodies to beat up. I'm past the point in my career where I'm picking and choosing.
If you follow my MMA career, I've always been the pro wrestler of women's MMA, coming out with a guitar, saying crazy things on interviews, promos and such.
I'm looking forward to getting out there and twisting limbs off and breaking bodies.
It's not like I was saying, 'Oh, I want to make it to the UFC one day,' because the sport wasn't big enough then that a guy could have this as his job.
Waving the banner of my coaches is a heavy flag to wield, so it's something I take very serious.
I've faced the undefeated, young up-and-comers, everybody counting me out before, on a big card, with big lights, TV.
It's not like I'm training every day by doing an avalanche suplex off the top turnbuckle.
Anyone who is friends with a fighter or lives with a fighter, you know that a fighter cutting weight is on edge.
If I could have had the opportunity to be a full-time fighter while I was one of the best in the world, what could I have done then?
Look at something like boxing. People know that some fights are fixed, but nobody looks at a boxing match and automatically assumes it's fake.
I think seeing me cross over to pro wrestling and having fun - I get up in the morning, and I'm not a morning person. My alarm goes off, and I'm back out and training again.
Don't talk to me about how I haven't done anything to prove myself. I'm not worth anything. Like, seriously, do your history first, then come up with something smarter than things that are blatantly not true.
I had a little gut check, and ultimately, I grew up as far as my MMA mentality and am more mature now.
It's hard to simulate the things that I do.
'Final Fantasy VII' is my favorite video game, and I had a conversation on Up Up Down Down, and I don't wanna say who is my favorite character, but my default would be Sephiroth.
I don't care what Dana White thinks.
You know how you defeat chaos? You suck the air out of it and put it to sleep.
WWE is something I've had my eye on.
I love rock and roll and loved getting on wrestling mats since I was six, and I have never been ashamed of it.
In MMA, there isn't time to admire your work until it's all over with. In sports-entertainment, I can admire what I'm doing while it's happening.
I have always had a desire to prove people that looked past me wrong, whether it was because I was a female trying to wrestle or fight in MMA or because I grew up on the wrong side of town.
Everything I've gotten, I've had to work twice as hard to earn.
Who says what is the right way and what isn't? That is some imagined social construct that people made up to feel okay about being average.
I did some really heavy, intensive clinics with Billy Robinson. Anyone that knows anything about Billy, he was a mean old dude! I survived training with him and Josh Barnett, right in the same vein, my head coach for, like, 12 years.
I think that Ronda and I had similar paths in MMA; she became a bigger star than I ever was, but a similar thing happened, where the backlash from the fans happened after you slip up once kind of makes you fall out of love with it.
I'm being more physical and aggressive while, at the same time, I'm not being overwhelmed by strong fighters like Sara McMann.
I've fought on some big cards. I've fought in some big arenas, on televised cards, pay-per-view cards, whatever.
I've already done enough to prove myself. Win or lose, I think I've done enough to cement my name in the history of this sport. So for me, it's more like I have to win just for an opportunity to get on the mic and say all that.
I have known, for me, that my fight in 'The Ultimate Fighter' can't be the way I went out.
One thing I've learned is that a lot of fans' knowledge starts and stops with the UFC.
Catch wrestling is pro wrestling, if you look at the ground moves and the rule set. It's just about learning the art of it for yourself.
I spent so many years in MMA waving the banner for pro wrestling, telling fighters they had to be more entertaining.
Look, it doesn't matter who you put in front of me or how many girls out of that locker room you want to throw at me. I'm taking them all out - and never losing this title.
Changing over to the UFC, I was trying to force myself to thinking, like, 'This was it; this is the most important thing.'
I've always said the thing about MMA that a lot of fighters don't understand is people care more about the story, about why a fight's happening, than the actual fight.
It's almost going to sound like a jerk thing to say, but it's so easy to manipulate the fans to love us or hate us. It's fun. It makes it really fun.
One of the reasons I started pursuing MMA was for all the similarities to pro wrestling that it has.
If you do your history, pro wrestling is just the worked version of what MMA is.
It's interesting because my Mixed Martial Arts upbringing is less Brazilian jiu-jitsu, which is the traditional thing that people study.
I'm a catch wrestler, so I used catch wrestling in Mixed Martial Arts.
I think, at every professional wrestler's heart, there's a fan.
In MMA, you're trained to tune the audience out. In sports entertainment, you're trained to feed off what the audience is thinking and feeling.
In sports entertainment, you can take your time and digest what's going on along with the audience.
I can't tell you how many fights I had where I had to pay to go fight. It was a lot of them.
I didn't get into MMA because I wanted to be UFC champion. That wasn't my motivation.
I've played basketball, and I've stood at the free-throw line with a tie game and 0.2 seconds left. But there is no feeling in the world like being in that ring when they close it up and ask, 'Are you ready?'
Cris Cyborg is one of the best in the world, and there is no shame in losing to her.
