I fought tall fighters, short fighters, strong fighters, slow fighters, sluggers and boxers. It was either learn or get knocked off.
I look up to fighters like Vitor Belfort, Anderson Silva, Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture. A lot of the fighters that fought into their older age and for me, as a warrior, I just love it.
Bellator is open to a fighters union - fighters binding together to see what's in our best interest. That's something you can't even breathe about elsewhere. I think it's a good thing for myself and other fighters to have that.
If promoters figure out a way to keep the fighters happy then those fighters will tell other fighters and that promotion will win.
Some fighters know when to stop on their own and go on to something else, and then some fighters have nothing to go back to after they are finished. Some fighters still have the burning fire and feel that they just need to try one more time. Few can do it.
Actually, when I fought in PRIDE, we had the best fighters in the world. Back then, the UFC had a very serious and big crisis; they were going through some tough times trying to get top fighters. All the best fighters were in PRIDE.
Anderson Silva, Georges Saint-Pierre, and Rodrigo Nogueira are some of the top fighters in the UFC among many other great fighters. The UFC has many of the toughest fighters around.
I see some fighters lose very badly, but still they get more praise or they're not overrated. They're just good fighters in a lot of people's eyes. But I feel like one loss with King Mo, it made me a very bad fighter somehow.
Trust me, I've seen a lot of fighters come in hot and they disappear faster than they came in after a loss or two. This is the UFC and the best fighters in the world are here. If you fight the great fighters you're bound to lose.
A lot of the time you have good fighters with good records, some top-class fighters, and they do some kind of crazy stuff, and there's nothing that you can do to stop them from doing it. That's the hardest part of training others.
The two don't necessarily translate, especially if you're a prize fighter: you've fought all your life, you've fought all these fights, and now you're trying to do a movie. You see that happen a lot - a lot of professional fighters don't necessarily make it so well into the movie world.
There are not many heavyweight fighters to come by, so having so many sparring partners is a big luxury a lot of other fighters don't have.
Fighters are my comrades. There are a lot of them with great personalities, they're great fighters, and they should be lifted up a little bit more. I just wish MMA would do that.
If I look at the fighters that are coming through, fighters like Carl Froch for instance, do I worry about fighters like that? Course not, I could eat them for breakfast.
I've seen a lot of the great fighters, so I've always been a fan of the Puerto Rican fighters and I'm happy to be one myself.
A lot of fighters don't like to critique other fighters because this is a fighting sport. But just like when you have good days and bad days, we are OK to talk about it. It's not so bad for me and my twin brother to critique each other because we have been criticized by everyone else too.