The hardest thing I had to overcome in life? I think racism. That’s so difficult because I don’t think anyone can ever understand it. It’s not that people don’t want to understand it, but they don’t want to touch it.
God, my parents, my wife. I don’t have a lot of friends, because I’m always moving around. I don’t drink, so I don’t hang out in bars. But they’ve been very big in my life. Because they have helped to encourage me.
MMA fighters are said to be some of the best athletes in the world. My plan at the age of 47 is to show the world I am still one of the best athletes as well.
Growing up, I started developing confidence in what I felt. My parents helped me to believe in myself. I wasn’t the best looking guy, I wasn’t the best athlete in the world, but they made me feel good about myself.
Coming from a small town it was tough to dream big. When I grew up in a small town in Georgia, my biggest dream was one day to be able to go to Atlanta.
Our responsibility in life is not to lie around and wait for things to happen. Our responsibility in life is to work. Life is getting out and getting things done. When people say they’re over-the-hill at age 50, I don’t understand it.
I never dreamed about being an actor, because that was out of reach. Coming from a small town that was big in farming, and also big in clothing factories, you don’t dream about being a professional football player or an actor.
I’d usually read the Bible a lot. Read little short Bible stories. And today, whenever I give speeches, I bring up a few of those Bible stories, because those are inspirations to me.
Football, that’s just athletics. But in the business world – doing everything – people are competing. So you need good work ethics, and I think it helped me to develop good work ethics, being in a small town.
I had teachers who said I was not good enough. So, I said I will become good enough. So I became this guy who became obsessed to become good enough. Now I sit down and tell people who I was. Now, I say, ‘Do you know who I am?’
Success is just being happy. And I try so many different things. I do a lot of different things. Because I think God has helped me to love myself. I know who God is, and I love God.
All these older kids here, and I’m the only one from a town that’s so small, if everyone breathed at the same time, you’d run out of oxygen. Man, there is nothing there.
I want to prove to people who sit on a couch and don’t do anything but criticize other people that, if you’re a true athlete or martial artist, you’re not old until you can’t get up and walk around anymore.
If I had to come up with something that just came to me, I think growing up in a small town, I want knowledge. I still think today, knowledge is one of the keys.
Because my parents, growing up, they worked hard. Everyone in my family woke up early in the morning. I used to see my mother and my father go off to work, and come back and, no matter what, they had time for the kids.
