I think every promoter's job is to pump their athletes up. Like, you see, Dana White did it all the time with branding people: all of a sudden, they're the best thing since sliced bread, just because that's the promoter's job.

My two things I always said is, No. 1, I'd be retired by the time I had my first kid, and No. 2, I'd be retired by the time I was 30.

People are stubborn, and sometimes even if change is good, people will always oppose change.

The worst 24- to 36-hour period of my whole camp, the part I like the least, is the part where I've gotta cut 13 to 15 pounds of water weight.

I want to go and fight the best guys in the world and show people I'm the best. And hey, if something doesn't go my way - I don't think that's gonna happen. I realize that's a possibility in competition, and that's what happens.

I don't give a damn about my record.

I trained with Jorge Masvidal when I've been training MMA for 2-1/2 months in Coconut Creek, Fla., in, like, December 2008. I was beating him up then!

A Division I college wrestling team has so many guys at such a high level it'd be like having every single guy in the gym being a top 10 UFC guy, and that's who you're competing against every single day. Most everyone has been wrestling since they were 5 years old. It's been their dream to wrestle in college. There's such a high level of intensity.

In MMA, all of these coaches are doing their best.

There are conferences every year where all the major coaches get together, and they talk about the issues in wrestling, what's going to happen. There's a major governing body, U.S.A. Wrestling, which oversees a lot of the issues. The organization is there in wrestling to make a very well-balanced, organized system.

When I came through the ranks in wrestling - in high school and college - those systems have been in place for 100 years, and they're fairly standard training across the board for all the colleges.

One of my best qualities is my persistence.

I don't try to hide my feelings or what I think.

I'm not hugely monetarily motivated.

I'm just a straightforward kind of dude.

I'm not willing to compromise my goals for monetary value.

There's more to life than fighting.

I love running my business, and I love wrestling. I love helping kids.

Man, I competed 40 times in three months when I was wrestling, my whole life.

A male athlete's peak, I believe, should be somewhere between 26 and 30.

It's like, hey, I've done what I could do, I've accomplished a lot, and now this - especially with wrestling - if this next generation wants to pass me up, great job. Good for them.

Young guys kind of have this chip on their shoulder of, 'I want to prove something,' right? 'I've got to prove how tough I am. I've got to prove how good I am.' And man, now as I'm getting older, I think it's almost sad when guys my age and older still have that chip on their shoulder.

When I say something, I generally stick to it, no matter what it is in life.

So I think there's a lot of people who are really interested to see how good I really am, because they know I'm good, but they're not really sure how good. They want to see that, and there's definitely interest in that, but because of some other people's shortsightedness, maybe it never really happens.