Quotes About MMA

Stylistically, every fight in the division is a hard fight. Lyoto Machida is unorthodox, Jon Jones is long and tall with good wrestling, Ryan Bader has good wrestling. You can't pick one and say, 'I want to fight him.'

Michael Chandler's performance in his UFC debut was great. His opponent was great, but it felt like he was mentally unprepared to face Michael Chandler. He crumbled to his pressure and movement early.

When I looked at the state of women's MMA, what I saw was that it was missing rivalries or anything theatrical about it. Everybody was trying to be Miss America, unwilling to go under any kind of criticism, and taking the safe answers. I thought I needed to do whatever I could to get attention.

It's interesting because my Mixed Martial Arts upbringing is less Brazilian jiu-jitsu, which is the traditional thing that people study.

The lowest I've ever made - and this was on the prelims - was 35 grand on a fight. I've made upwards of 80 grand on a fight on sponsors.

To win the belt from Bisping, the hardest problem for me would be to train hard for him because he stinks. I'm just kidding, he's really good... No, I'm lying.

One thing I've learned is that a lot of fans' knowledge starts and stops with the UFC.

I think Khabib is going to take him down immediately, or create some kind of scramble immediately. I don't think Poirier stops his takedowns.

You can tell MMA is a carb sport because it's fast; it's explosive. It's not a fat storage sport.

As far as the UFC, if they offer us a fair deal, then we would be open to fighting in the UFC.

If we fought like the old days, with no time limit, it would be better to work. We only have five minutes to work per round so it's complicated, especially because everybody knows that my ground game is good.

I took my time with the sport of MMA. I wrestled, won the Olympics. I boxed for years.

I first decided that I could make a career of MMA after I decided to take it seriously and not act like a teenager in some band, but fully commit myself like a professional. Roughly, when I decided to up and move in the middle of the night from Omaha, Neb. to Denver, Colo. for proper training.

My rivalry against Chandler - it was personal. On the same night he defeated my brother, he said he could beat my entire family. I made him pay for his words by knocking him out inside the cage in one minute.

I've never asked for more money, not one time in my career. I fought Demian Maia for $30,000. The No. 2 guy in the world, I was fighting for $30,000. So I don't care about money.

Nothing about Ben Askren impresses me. He's a one-dimensional fighter. He's never hurt a fly.

I'm ATT to the bone. I have my close circle of people, my clique - Jorge Masvidal, Mike Brown, Dan Lambert. I'm not friends with everybody. It's a gym, but this is a one-man sport.

MMA has been very accepting. I wouldn't say that every gym you go to is as open as the gym I'm a part of. But they just accepted me with open arms.

I just opened a free, public MMA gym in Paraiba, so why can't Curitiba or Sao Paulo have one? No money? Someone needs to do this.

Due to the UFC educating people on MMA as a sport, people give us the respect as athletes, opening doors to opportunities which wasn't available in the past. It has been amazing to be part of the UFC journey.

I don't say MMA fans are racist at all. What I said is that fans are opinionated, especially because we're the only professional sport to give them that access.

MMA is a full contact sport, a kind of an organized street fight, which uses both striking and grappling techniques and involves 36 different martial arts.

People don't understand: I've had 37 fights, three to five fights every year, for 17 years. That does something to somebody. These suspensions are the only vacations I've ever had.

I've really valued each area of MMA.