My comfortability is always going favor the grappling side, that's the path of least resistance. But, I don't need necessarily need to force the takedowns like I used to before.
I'm not about trying to hand pick my fights and tip toe around the competition.
I'm about fighting the best guys.
I always felt like the UFC brass kind of had it out for me.
At the end of the day, I feel like I've never had an easy break in terms of opponents.
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.
Do you think the UFC is going to owe you a favor when you step up on short notice when nobody else is doing it? There's a reason a whole bunch of us aren't doing it. If you want to be that scapegoat, and think that the UFC's going to owe you one, good luck with that. Let me know how that goes.
As history has shown, I don't think the UFC is in the business of doing favors for other people.
When you look at the U.S., it's a little weird, man because we have so many other sports and other things that we can watch and support that it's hard to get the support of an entire country around you.
I think everyone is kind of an immigrant somehow, and I wasn't raised in an American society at home. My household was a Jamaican household, so I got all my traditions, all my roots and culture intact, so I'm able to support both countries.
There's a lot of American citizens out there that do jobs that they hate, day in and day out. For me to do what I love to do, with people that I like and enjoy being around who are chasing the same dream, same passions, to have that around you day in and day out, I think it says a lot.
I'm always a guy that looks at every situation as glass half full.
You put me in there with anybody at '35 or '45, I get on your back, I take you down, it's going to be a long night and it's a dangerous situation to be in.
I'm a hard guy to hit and take down, and once I get you on the ground I'm going to choke you out. Even if you resist a few of the other attempts I'm going to get you one way or the other. I'm like the Boogeyman... I'm gonna get you.
People can forget about you so quickly and that's not what I want. I want to keep people talking because at the end of the day that's what is going to get you paid. People have to want to care to watch you fight and you have to be relevant.
I like to think I defied the odds my entire life, definitely my entire athletic career.
You change the mind and world of one individual and that's huge, man. You reach one person and that starts a spiral effect and starts to snowball. I think that's the one thing as an athlete we should all focus on doing and that's striving to give back in a positive manner.
What many fans don't realize with fighters, this is our job. But at the same time outside of this, we have regular lives where we do the same things that everybody else does. We have the problems. We get speeding tickets, we get pulled over, we have family issues, we have girlfriend issues, we have issues amongst ourselves, self doubt.
I had to learn to toughen up and fend for myself. You'd think when you have a lot of brothers and sisters, they'd come to your aid and rescue you a lot of times, but for us it wasn't really like that. It was tough love.
If you go into a negotiating room and are like, 'Well I was on the same card as Conor McGregor, so maybe I should get a little bit more money,' they'll probably just look at you like, 'What? In what universe does that even make sense?' So I don't see how anyone could possibly think it's going to be a trickle-down effect.
