My heart outweighs all the talent. If they’ve got more talent, I believe that my heart will still overcome that. You’ve got to have heart to step inside the octagon anyway.
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.
The one thing about me, if it is a 15-minute fight, I’m fighting every one of them 15 minutes. And if it’s a 25-minute fight, I’ll be fighting all 25 until the bell rings.
That’s what really gets me going, thinking about my past. I think about all the tough times and bad times I’ve had in my life and I bring all that into the Octagon. That’s only because it’s hard going in there trying to fight someone who didn’t do anything to you.
You have 20 fights, you should know what it takes to get yourself ready. If you don’t feel like you’re ready, you let your coach know ‘hey we need to work on a little bit more of this.’
