Frank Mir
I've been around long enough to know that you never say never.
I just love fighting. You lock me in there with another guy - that strategy, that game of chess - I'm in love with it. I'll be in love with it until the day I die. Now, if you want to strap a belt on me at the end of it? That's cool, my kids can brag about it.
Honestly, I think big guys are easier to fight. They don't move as fast, they get tired quickly and they're not as technical.
It's a disadvantage when there is not enough footage of an opponent.
I think other fighters can see that I've had hardships, in and out of the cage, and I've persevered and pushed forward. If other people can take that and incorporate it into their lives, then obviously that is rewarding for me to see.
It has always been a dream of mine to fight in Japan.
I think the day of retirement will come when I go out there and do everything I was supposed to do and I still can't perform. I'm going out there and I'm a danger to myself, then it stresses your family out.
I don't want them to have to be the one to come tell me, 'Hey, you performing at the top of your sport is no longer feasible. Biology has set its course.'
At least my situation I can be like, look, I avoid physical confrontations, obviously not because I have an issue with physical violence, but I try to see the bigger picture of what it takes for humans to coincide with each other. We're all the same race.
You always see the guys who go, 'Walk away from a fight,' and people look at him and go, 'You're not really a fighter anyways. Are you walking away because you're strong or because of your cowardice?'
In the future, I'd like to break more into acting and stuff. I think that pro wrestling is a great springboard, really. You see a lot of guys coming from that world. In a lot of ways, it's like live theater. Guys going out there and performing and having to act on the fly and be their own stuntmen at the same time.
I very much like the Japanese version of pro wrestling, probably the most.
I've watched guys in pro wrestling actually die. It's very dangerous. It's very injury heavy.
I fought Mark Hunt and I got caught with a shot that he threw. That's kind of like getting caught by a submission by me.
The margin for error with Mark Hunt is a lot smaller than it is with some of the other heavyweights where you can get caught with a shot and maybe recover.
I didn't have anything to prove to begin with to anybody else. I didn't start out doing this because I wanted to win awards or titles. I like martial arts, I like training, I like the lifestyle.
I want to constantly get better. Why not just keep fighting? Until I get told that I can't anymore, then I'll move on.
At first, when I hit 300 pounds, my wife actually brought that up. She said, 'You do realize you can't walk around like this if you want to train or fight. It doesn't look like you want to fight anymore. Do you want to fight?' That called into question my own reality.
I think just being in there with Fedor is an impressive thing to be able to say at the end of my career, sitting in my office telling people my accolades.
Who you fought is a test of who you really are.
Someone who sees you on a certain night, maybe they've seen you on a bad night. I've seen Tom Brady throw interceptions. Is it time to retire, or is it a bad game? What if all week in practice he looked phenomenal?
Fedor is kind of hard to nail down to one company.
If I get too political or if I say things... the whole religious thing, which if you know my background, kind of baffles me anyway. I leave that to the people that are religious and that's their thing. I just try to steer clear of it.
Competing is something that once I retire from, it's not something I can go back and do.
I think Matt Mitrione is a super tough guy, very athletic but I think that I'd probably get more pay-per-view buys if I fought Fedor.
I'd rather fight named fighters and Fedor's somebody I've always wanted to fight and I think that it would be nice to be able to complete that kind of Who's Who of my resume.
I enjoy fighting.
I want to fight for as long as possible.
I never found striking to be an effective form of fighting. I still clown people and tell them how animals in the wild that are hunted, they have to strike, bulls and rams, they use striking as protective nature. But the ones who are the predators, they're the grapplers who go for the throat.
To have an effective striking match, you need gloves on. Junior dos Santos would have a very short career if he was in a bare knuckle fight. The early UFCs, before gloves, were grappling with some striking.
I've always been a fan of martial arts, even before I did jiu-jitsu tournaments. I did point karate tournaments and wrestled in high school. To me, it was just an evolution and mixed martial arts was the next step. I just wanted to compete and train in it. I had no illusions of it being a paying gig.
I watched guys who were professional fighters hit each other 30 times, and it still didn't go anywhere. I thought 'that wasn't very effective' But I saw if you got someone in a choke, you can end a fight in seconds, and I pushed toward that.
I love martial arts, so why wouldn't I want to help people understand it more?
I think the more that people appreciate the sport, the more they're a fan of it.
I remember one time watching Jose Aldo fight Jonathan Brookins, and he just chopped him up.
There are too many fights in our sport that are exciting, and you've got to let us fight.
I'm not an unintelligent individual.
Knowledge is just how I am. I like to know things. I'm an inquisitive human being.
I've been a pretty big guy my whole life.
I'm pretty well-spoken guy, but I don't have a college education. Me making money in other avenues is not going to be as easy as walking into the Octagon.
He doesn't like to be hit. Not that anybody likes to be hit, but Brock for whatever reason has shown much more of a dramatic response to the negativity of those shots. To the point where he's not asleep, it isn't like he got knocked out, he's not getting dropped, but he just turns his face away from adversity.
Stipe is a phenomenal champ as far as like he's a good guy, if you want to point your kids in the right direction, 'Hey, look at this guy, he's a good person.'
I haven't fought the easiest opponents. You can show up at your best and still not come out on top.
When people are wary about fighting on the ground, I have a more difficult time.
I'm all for CM Punk becoming a part of the organization. I think his background and training in martial arts, he should be capable of handling himself and doing well. And bottom line is, people are going to tune in to watch and that's pretty much the bar of getting into the UFC, if you can sell tickets.
Those guys at AKA know how to make adjustments.
In the past, I would try to use as little strength as possible because strength will get you tired if you explode too many times. Well, get in shape.
When people are pushing me against the cage, in the past I was more susceptible to allowing it to happen because I had that jiu-jitsu mentality that I'm not going to grind back.
With the half-guard and guard, if you have a belly it's hard to pull your knees up.
The dieting thing, I think you have to approach as intelligently as you can. First I started as a vegetarian. And for a whole year, I gave it a shot. And it kept my weight down. But honestly, my body fat wasn't as low - I got a little bit softer. I was getting injured a lot more. I felt a lack of 'umph.'