Quotes from Frank Shamrock

My kickboxing coach Maurice Smith is one of the best ever.

The lesson I learned from the Cung Le fight is this: What we do is very dangerous and really shouldn't be played with. I should have just knocked him out, not let him dance around and look good.

I've got a few tricks when it comes to psychology and stuff.

I've always had trouble with long guys because as a shorter guy I have smaller explosive movements and a lot of long guys I can get trapped inside of them.

Only guys who fight for a living know what it's like to be hungry and beaten and tired, mentally, all the time. The average person has no understanding of what that is and what that could be.

I was raised by the state of California, and then various families and mentors.

I know what the bottom is like. I know what it's like to have zero. You can always build up. But it starts by changing your mind and taking action.

Mixed martial arts chose me. After all the trouble I'd been in, it felt really good fit to find a discipline to train and build a community around my goals.

Mixed martial arts or whatever you want to call it, it is still martial arts.

What mixed martial arts is being marketed as is not the truth. We're not a bunch of idiots in a cage drinking beer all the time. It's a lifestyle, but it's a positive lifestyle.

I speak the truth on what happened to me because it's happening to a lot of people that grow up in displaced and disadvantaged communities.

You saw what network support did for Strikeforce when Showtime came aboard. You saw what Spike TV did for the UFC when they came aboard, because the UFC was dying before Spike came along.

I'd been an entrepreneur, a very focused businessman, spokesman, and ran multiple companies based around Strikeforce. When it changed hands, my whole life stopped.

We have been conditioned as a society to believe that you stand there in a gentlemanly fashion and punch each other in the head until someone is unconscious and we celebrate. We celebrate the fact that I can punch him in the head until he is unconscious and can't think straight and stand up. I gotta tell you, I have a problem with that sport.

I wasn't fighting because I was a sportsman. I was fighting because I had no other way. I didn't have a career. I was a multi-felony convicted guy.

Above all things, Strikeforce is a stable, established business that has experience with live events, and it has the martial arts culture. I worked closely with EliteXC and they had no martial arts culture. They didn't really understand what they were doing, so the odds of them being successful were kind of a crapshoot.

I mean, I work in television, so every day is like the end of your career and then each day is a new one.

Nick Diaz brings it every single time and I bring it every single time.

My first fighting team was my brother, and I learned that I came from a community where your team was your family. We functioned as a unit. You helped as many people as you could, because they would help you.

I look back at my life fighting and I can't believe I did all that. This sport is totally nuts.

I had a rough upbringing. Group homes. Foster homes.

I didn't want to keep fighting and risking injury to my body when the pay wasn't where I needed it to be. I made a strategic decision to give it up after I fought Tito. I always planned on coming back when the sport was able to right itself and had a brighter future.

When you have harmony in the different areas of your life, with your mind, body, and spirit, you're just so much stronger, especially in really intense, stressful situations, like 'Fight Master.'

I came to a realization in 1999 of how important striking was going to become in this sport because it's the most efficient way to finish a fight.