Quotes About Adversity

A lot of people said I would never make it, and this and that, I'd never be a top 10 fighter, that I'd never fight for a title. Just stuff like that. Achieving all those goals and being the person that I am, this is going against everything everyone said I couldn't do.

I bump into a lot of people that have similar problems that I have but less titles or magazines than I have, and they just challenge their adversity with the same tenacity, with the same enthusiasm, with the same will to succeed because life is one and you've got to take advantage.

I've come back from all my losses and won world titles every time.

I've come back from losses and won world titles.

I've never chosen the easy route to world titles or the easy route in fights, and I came up short against Stevenson.

I've won titles at home, I've won them abroad, I've defended titles abroad and lost them, and gone on to dominate my next opponent to win them back.

In 2011, I was in the best physical shape of my life. I was one of the five best players in the world and I had won four titles by the end of July. But from one day to another, I couldn't take a step. I couldn't breathe.

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.

To be honest, I don't remember what happened in '95, '96 and '97. It was hard years. My memory is deleting.

I think you have to be honest with yourself. You have to accept your situation and do the best that you can.

To be honest, after all the crap that happened with 'Summer Heights High,' I was like, 'I'm not going to write anything controversial or edgy ever again; I just can't handle the blame.'

To be honest, I don't feel like I am able to say that I had a childhood, not in a way normal kids my age had. I had something that was specific to Bosnia in '90s, something I call a period of survival.

I'm not a materialistic person, to be honest. I'm all about the energy, man. I never had anything growing up, so I don't know what it means to lose anything.

I want to prove the naysayers wrong. They're everywhere. And to be honest with you, they're all I see, and they're what motivates me.

You gotta deal with a lot of people, the naysayers... but I've always been the guy who kinda just smiles and laughs at it. I use it as constructive criticism to be honest. Whether they're intentionally trying to be kind of spiteful or not, it's constructive criticism because you can't say there's always truth to it but there's definitely something.

A lot of people say, 'Do you feel a lot of pressure?' There's not that much pressure, to be honest.

I have to be honest: in my career, I've really had to fight to come in the middle again. A lot of managers told me, 'You are way more comfortable as a winger than as a midfielder,' but I always kept my trust and confidence in what I knew about my qualities.

People called me all kinds of names. I had to put on a coat of armor and not care. You also learn in this industry that not everyone is going to love you. They will hate on you.

When I was on 'The View,' I went backstage to Whoopi Goldberg's dressing room, and she told me, 'People are going to love what you do, and people are going to hate what you do, but you have to keep doing it. You have to stand up and do what you know is true, despite what people are going to say.' And I'm taking that into every aspect of my life.

I think it's the human spirit inside of all of us that has an enormous capacity to survive.

I had to steal to survive.

In the jungle, I can kill and eat a poisonous snake to survive. But on Bigg Boss' I'd be chewed alive by those man-eaters.

I did a lot of tae kwon do and branched off into other stuff later on, but tae kwon do is great. It was my equalizer. That was how I was able to survive in the land of the giants. Thank God for that.

North Korea is still my homeland, my country. I suffered on the outside because I was alien, without identity. I was nobody. I was in the worst situation, fighting for everything, to survive.