I’ve been blessed enough to live some of my dreams.

I have a Gracie background and a Matt Serra background so I’ve always used jiu-jitsu but it takes a while to reach black belt level.

I grew up taking the Long Island Railroad from Baldwin, New York into Penn Station and walking upstairs to Madison Square Garden. Those are some of my favorite memories.

I was living out on Long Island in Baldwin, New York when Hurricane Sandy hit. With the storm surge, the whole first floor of our house was under about three feet of water. We lost a lot of valuable stuff – sentimental stuff like pictures and Christmas ornaments. Nobody expected flooding that bad.

A lot of these players, if you listen to the Islanders or the Rangers, they get interviewed in the locker room right after the game, it’s very structured answers. They’re very protected.

I want to fight the best possible people.

I’m open-minded and never think I know everything. I actually feel like I know nothing, and that allows me to learn on a different level.

I feel like smaller countries, other countries, they cheer, they support their people no matter what. We need to get a little bit more supportive of our people.

Don’t think OF your goals, think FROM them.

When I’ve trained as hard as I possibly can through training camp and I come to the end, where my body is worn out and I’m tired, I know I’m ready to peak.

A lot of my career I’m out of the gym, I’m injured and I’m blown up.

The sky is the limit when you work hard.

I want a rematch with Mousasi more than anything.

I never even imagined having my own shoe.

It’s been a dream of mine to fight at MSG.

We bought a dog, and we financed it – a $1,400 dog. We had no money, so me and my wife had to put our names together with our credit just to finance a dog.

The first thing I do when I book a fight is I go to the Internet and I print out a picture of the guy and put it on my refrigerator.

I really like Cain Velasquez. I like his pace that he puts on; he is mentally and physically breaking everybody he goes with. He’s just tenacious and relentless. I like Anderson Silva, too. I like his style. He’s very relaxed.

I’ve never had anything. I just wanted to one day live comfortable. Like, be able to go out to lunch with my friends without being like, crap, I don’t know if I can afford this bill right now. I shouldn’t be doing this. That’s all I really wanted.

I put a lot of pressure on myself to be the best.

I try to keep a positive attitude about everything.

Everybody has a sinful nature pulling them at every turn.

I think there’s times where I’m introverted, and there’s times where I’m extroverted.

Money, autographs, I had no desire to even do that. I fell in love with fighting and those types of things became attached to it.

I think any time you get beaten down and rise back up again, you become stronger.

I grew up in a decently tough neighborhood.

People forget, I was 9-0, I was fighting Anderson Silva. I was fighting the best guys this sport has ever seen, one after the other, with no experience.

There’s bad apples in every type of job, whether it’s sports or normal day-to-day jobs.

There’s no ceiling… just a continuation of improvement.

Boxing, Jiu Jitsu, some good old-fashioned wrestling and plenty of cardio. You name it, it’s part of my routine.

I wanna get myself in such good shape that no matter how much I push myself in a fight, I know that the other guy is gonna be a little bit more tired.

I love competing.

I won‘t be happy unless I finish Lyoto Machida.

I’ve been through so much damn adversity, I’ve had so much critiqued on me. From being the undefeated world champion to never really getting the love or the respect I feel I deserved when I was on top and then finally getting knocked down and then everybody jumping on top, trying to kick me while I was down.

You’re always trying to feel confident and to feel good about yourself, but what it comes down to is really giving up to someone else. Having faith.

I’ve kind of grew to enjoy fighting legends that I got into the sport watching and admiring.

If you get into the habit of cutting corners, they start to add up.

To become a world champion, to defeat Anderson Silva, to accomplish my goal in one night, it was a super surreal feeling.

Keeping my focus on what’s important – inside the Octagon and out – is never lost on me.

The only reason I got into MMA was to be the best.

My training varies so much. There’s no such thing as a typical day.

I love ‘Jacare.’ I’m a fan of ‘Jacare.’

I’ve wrestled my whole life.

I want to have the biggest challenges in front of me and conquer them. That’s why I wanted to fight Anderson Silva when nobody else wanted to fight him.

When you’re so physically and emotionally invested in something – like you have to be in MMA – there’s nothing like having your friends and family there to support you on fight night.

The thing about mixed martial arts is you have to know every single martial art in the world or you’re at a disadvantage. So, there’s so much to learn. I have to know wrestling. I have to know kick boxing. I have to know boxing. I have to know karate.

The truth comes out… I think when you fight you find out who you are

I’m going to win the belt at middleweight and I’m going to go up to 205 and win the belt there after I dominate the middleweight division for a little bit – that will happen.

Training is my life. It’s all I’ve known since I was in second grade, when I started wrestling.

Look at the guys I’ve fought. Anderson Silva. Lyoto Machida. Vitor Belfort. All those guys are much quicker than Luke Rockhold and I did just fine.

I like to compete. So, any time I get to go live – which means go all out – that’s what I like to do.

When I’m spiritually in the right place, there’s no stopping me.

Being the guy that ended the run of the greatest fighter ever will always be attached to my name.

To win the belt from Bisping, the hardest problem for me would be to train hard for him because he stinks. I’m just kidding, he’s really good… No, I’m lying.

My brother was probably one of the toughest kids from my neighborhood and he didn’t make it easy on me. He made sure I was getting beat up as much as possible growing up. If he wasn’t beating me up, he was making his friends beat me up.

Its about continuing to learn and being open-minded, don’t ever think you know it all.

There’s times where you get the loud, crazy comments from me, and there’s times where I say basic things, and stay quiet because I don’t want to cause any drama. Sometimes I’m in the mood where I’m just going to tell it how it is, and have fun. And whoever doesn’t like it, OK.

My ‘if it’s not broken, don’t fix it’ type attitude might have held me back and made me complacent.

My ultimate goal was always that I want to be known as one of the greatest of all time. The first step was obviously to be UFC champion.

I’ll never underestimate ‘GSP.’

I grew up in a rough neighborhood, so I fought a lot. Even when I was wrestling, if I lost a match, I always thought, That guy would never beat me in a fight.

I expect the worst of every situation, so if it does happen I’m prepared for it.

People gotta realize as a fighter you want to become a champion because you get paid way more money. So the belt is very intriguing for that reason.

I never really ate greens, what I always did do was I always ate peanut butter and honey and I ate it all day. There’s not much nutritional value in that. I just love peanut butter and I love honey so I just put them together.

I took my first fight in the UFC on short notice. I took my first big fight against a top-five guy on ten days notice.

It’s just an honor to be part of an apparel brand like Reebok.