There's good days and bad days in sports. You have to understand that. If you go out and have a bad day, you can't give up. You can't quit your career over one bad day.Collection: Sports
When you start with 'I'm going to go on a diet,' you get to like a couple of days in or a week in, two weeks in, and you get that voice in the back of your head going 'why are you doing this?' If you don't have a strong reason and a strong motivation for doing it, you quit obviously.
You can't count a dog like me out of the game. That's just not how it works.
I make nails looks soft.
Every concussion is a completely different kind of injury.
There's always a balance to it, three times I've fought before in my home town, there is a different amount of pressure to it, when you're the villain, there's no pressure, everyone wants to see you lose.
Pressure is like a tap, that can only come with experience, I can turn it down, manage it... at the same time, sometimes you need it, you get nerves that bring out the best in you.
Long before the UFC, I was a fan of Mark Hunt. To me, he was a big star before he stepped foot inside the Octagon.
In training, I was always a professional. But it takes so much more than that to compete at the highest level in the UFC. You have to be perfect and you have to be hungry.
I'm not trying to say I'm the smartest fighter, but I'm saying that, in this sport, you have to aim for perfection.
Any elite level sportsman aims for perfection. You look at golf. You are really trying to get a hole in one every time, but that's not how the game goes. You have to aim for that perfection.
If the ultimate goal is to be the best fighter in the world, you have to be in UFC.
There comes a time in the UFC when you've had enough fights, you have enough experience that you're confident in your abilities and you know what you can do.
Just being a fun guy is not what I want to be known for.
I grew up in a good family and I graduated school.
I chose to do this sport because I love it.
When a fight gets hard and you're getting pushed and broken down, you think in your head, 'I've paid too much of a price. I've sacrificed too much of my life, I've sacrificed the last three months for this moment and there's no way I'm going to quit now.'
When I pull on those UFC gloves, that's my black jersey, that is All Black level.
This is just a nasty, nasty sport but it's a perfect storm for me because I'm a nasty man.
There's two ways to get paid in this sport, fighting for a belt or fighting with Conor McGregor.
Looking back on the fight, it was incredibly tough contest; Felder's an incredible opponent and I feel like I gained more from that one single fight than I did in experience from the previous five fights. Just going the full five rounds, being under the pressure of a sold-out arena in your hometown - I gained a lot of experience going through that.
I feel like as soon as I have the mental attitude that I'm the best fighter in the world, it's a sure sign that you've stopped developing as a fighter and the wheels are falling off. So I am always focusing on how I can improve and not just repeating the same things that I do.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a terrible loser.
I am ultra-competitive and I am the sorest loser.
It's a game of adjustments, I would say, fighting. You learn lessons from your previous fight and you make adjustments.
I understand the rankings, they're fun to talk about, it's something to argue with your mates about.
I was playing both rugbys, I would just jump into any sport. I just loved sport.
Whenever I'm put in a tough spot, a tough situation or whenever you put pressure on me, that's when I perform and do well.
A lot of fighters develop to what they think is their full potential outside of the UFC and they come into UFC and just go downhill from there because they think they don't have to grow and develop anymore.
After every fight, win or lose, you need to get back in the gym and stay humble. Get better, take your wins, take your losses, and learn those lessons and get better.
Fight week you're going to eat the same thing, that's a standard thing regardless of weight.
My goal is to be known as the best fighter in the world.
Providing for my family is something I cannot pass on.
I need to support my daughter and do what's best for her.
I don't want to be known as a good loser.
I love to fight more than I love to win, and that's a funny thing for people to try to understand.
It's not like you can just click your fingers and make an adjustment like that, you have to change your whole approach to the sport.
Fighting for $50,000 bonuses when I had no money and it could really change my life... you're gonna hunt it.
You have to decide: Do you wanna be known as a tough, exciting fighter that goes out there and puts on great performances, or do you wanna be a world champion? I'm taking the second one 10 times out of 10.
We're here to entertain and I'm lucky that my style is suited to what people want and how people want to be entertained.
Fighting is a mixture of thinking and your reactions, a balance.
I can't go back in time and change something. I don't have a time machine.
That's the great thing about a sport like fighting: It's on you. You have the ability to make the changes, to get better and turn a negative into a positive. Just because you make a mistake doesn't mean you're finished.
I feel I came into the UFC pretty underdeveloped. I was learning and growing and developing as a fighter in front of everyone's eyes.
The mistake a lot of people make in that they think they're made of papier-mache. They take a loss and they're like, 'Oh, that's it. I'm done. I can't get better.' Man, that gets me.
I know for a fact, win or lose, I'm going on another trip to the hospital if I fight Tony Ferguson.
Don't look down on BKB. I swear that's my retirement plan. I'm gonna be the BKB champ. That's what I'm coming for. I'm coming in at 100 kilos, no gloves, let's get it.
I decided a very long time ago that I'm all in for this sport, regardless of success or failure.
I quit my job when I got a contract with Legend FC paying me $1000 to fight. Before that, I was 3-3 as a professional, coming off a loss and struggling for motivation. I took a week or two away from the sport and went crazy, I missed it that much. It was then and there, regardless of success or failure, I decided this was what I wanted to do.
You want to fight people that have heaps of momentum.