I wasn't allowed to throw big hooks and overhand rights until I'd been striking for three years. It's so you don't rely on those things from the very beginning. If your footwork sucks, and you can only stand in one place and throw your hands all crazy while the other person is running around, you're never going to be able to hit them.

If there's a camera on me or off me, it's roughly the same, just a lot less energy.

I always say you have to be willing to get your heart broken.

My life is so active, and I'm fighting the whole day that I don't have any aggressiveness or any energy outside of fighting. I'm the most chill couch potato you could ever meet.

The style I have in judo is very unique... One big advantage a judo player has is they have very good posture and - like, wrestlers, they show when they're about to do a take-down... which judo players don't, and so I kind of incorporate the boxing style with a judo grip and finishing that way.

Buffalo wings and cider is all I need.

Bartending took the romanticism out of drinking.

I'm a big crier. I never cry when something is painful, but I cry if things are frustrating. Like if I'm trying to do something, and I mess up over and over. If I'm playing a video game, and I can't beat a level that I've tried 10 times, I'll cry. When I was a kid, I think I cried for every practice from 2003 to the middle of 2006.

See, for some reason, I feel like it's a victory if I wake up one minute before the alarm. It's like I'm in a contest with myself, with my foot kicking around until it wakes up the rest of my body. It's the stupidest thing. But it makes me feel like I've already won something.

At the end of the day, I can't curl up with people's opinions.

I'm kind of like a middle mix between a warrior diet and a Paleo diet, so I only eat once a day and it's at night - so kind of like interval fasting. But I eat until I'm full, I eat as much as I want, and I really don't eat anything that you couldn't find, you know, 10,000 years ago.

I was always pushed to do that much more, and in the long run that made me more of an MMA fighter. My mom always told me that if I let it go to the judges, I'd lost. There was no way I was going to win a decision, so I had to find ways to finish the fight fast.

I go to bed every night thinking about all the possible ways that I can succeed.

I had to learn to take my time in MMA, and I was just able to keep a clear head.

People call me a whole lot of things, but above anything else, I'm a fighter, and it's going to be hard to accept an identity without that.

At 150 pounds, I feel like I'm at my healthiest and my strongest and my most beautiful.

I fight with pizazz. It's a different sound from everyone else. It's the sound of pizazz.

In MMA it's a lot less intimidating because it's not like you get one shot at a title every four years. You get a title shot every couple of months... With the Olympics, you don't always have this, so there is so much more pressure involved.

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.

I am pretty much gluten-free; I barely ever eat bread, and the only dairy I eat is Greek yogurt and goat cheese.

The bigger my chest is, the more it gets in the way. It just creates space. It makes me much more efficient if I don't have so much in the way between me and my opponent.

Kids don't like what they don't understand, and judo was always my social outlet. I always felt really socially awkward, and I couldn't speak very well when I was younger. When I was doing judo, it was something that I could understand and someplace where I felt that I belonged and fit in.

Fighting is not a man's thing, it is a human thing.

When I was in school, martial arts made you a dork, and I became self-conscious that I was too masculine. I was a 16-year-old girl with ringworm and cauliflower ears. People made fun of my arms and called me 'Miss Man.' It wasn't until I got older that I realized: These people are idiots. I'm fabulous.