“When I started out as a little kid, I didn’t say ‘I just want to run football.’ I wanted to be a great athlete.”

I always said I wanted to be a great athlete, ever since I was an overweight little kid. I just love competing in any kind of athletics.

MMA is my love.

I’m just not a guy that loves to eat. I love to work and love to work out. I think I go against all the nutritionists who say you need to do this or need to do that, so I’m one of the oddballs.

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.

I don’t worry about protein. I don’t worry about all that. I’m from old school. I grew up in south Georgia. They didn’t worry about cholesterol or protein. They went out and worked and lived a long time, so I don’t put a lot of worries in my mind.

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.

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 was a little different. I still say I’m a little different, because success to me is not having the most money, or having the biggest car or the biggest house.

P.E. was my life in school. Without it, I wouldn’t be standing here. It gave me confidence when I was an overweight kid with a speech impediment.

I was a fat little kid with a speech impediment. I used to get beat up, not just picked on.

We have the DNA of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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.

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.

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.

I told my mom the reason I started working out was because I wanted to break the necks of the people picking on me. I wanted to hurt them. I said I didn’t want any teacher to put me down any more.

Believing that no one is better than the other. You know I grew up in the South. My senior year there was a very big racial tension.