A Quote by Brian Ortega
On my block, I had all these guys coming in and out of jail. When I was 13, I was playing outside my house, and one of those guys came across the street and started cussing me out, wanting to fight me. People knew I trained kickboxing and would put the gloves on with my friends, so that made me a target.
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I played a lot at the school across the street from my house. That's how I started, really. Playing street basketball and challenging the guys out on the court who were older than me.
I went to lunch at the Ivy. People started running across the street, and one guy almost got hit by a car. I started to freak out. That put me into hiding for three weeks. I didn't leave the house.
I never had a postup game, which really hurt me eventually. Later in my career, teams would put smaller guys on me to stop my shooting and driving and I wasn't able to exploit my height advantage. I would just take bigger guys outside and drive or shoot my setshot.
Back when I was in high school, I came out onstage with my guitar and had four guys playing behind me. We were just playing a dance, but I was standing in front of an audience rocking out. I'm still rocking out like when I was a kid. I haven't changed.
Going to UCLA, as far as I'm concerned, afforded me two things. One was the advantage of meeting friends and getting to know a group of guys I hung out with, was chummy with. All of us eventually had success with film. Making films, cutting our own little movies together, 3 in the morning going out and shooting stuff, finding gels that people had thrown away, making our own lights. It was like a frat house for film geeks, the Pad O' Guys. That's what being at UCLA afforded me.
When I fight, part of the swagger that I had when I used to fight on the street comes out. When I fought on the street, I used to try to embarrass someone for even wanting to fight me.
Look at me: The guys I fight, they're in their primes. Canelo is out there fighting guys on their way out.
I remember when I was 6 years old and my brother used to go seek out guys that were 13 to come over and play football against me while he was the 'permanent quarterback.' I didn't know exactly what the age difference was, but I was already playing against older guys.
If people ask me about it, I think it would be great for me to be like, 'Look, [Kanye West] called me and told me the line before it came out. Like, joke's on you guys, we're fine'.
My thing I liked was to challenge guys that were smaller, guys that were supposed to be quicker. Because I think self-consciously I was trying to prove to people it wasn't just my height that was getting me across in these various sports. It was some other intrinsic things that I had that made me a good athlete.
I'm very flexible. I've got flexibility in any weight class. If you guys out there want to fight me man, I will fight you guys.
When I started out playing live, it was different. I felt good about it. Nobody knew who I was. I just opened for so-and-so. Now, I'm playing to people who are coming out to see the band. There's too much attention on the band and me.
When I first came into the league, I was in Tennessee and I had guys like Courtland Finnegan, Chris Hope, Michael Griffin - a ton of guys that were willing to pour into me and help me figure out how to be a pro, whether it was the defense, whether it was life off the field.
Guys like Rey Mysterio Jr., Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko, guys like that, they've inspired me. They made me want to do this. Those guys were three of the top cruiserweights that you can name.
I always kind of divided the gay guys I met up into two groups when I first started coming out. There were the guys who thought there was something fundamentally wrong with them and hated themselves and were so burdened with shame and internalized homophobia. It just really paralyzed and shredded them. And then there were guys like me who thought, "I'm fine, everybody else is crazy. My church is sick and the family's crazy, but me? I'm fine."
I'm not afraid to challenge guys. I'm not afraid to put guys in positions to help the team. And I'm not beyond accepting criticism and challenges myself. I think that's why guys are attracted to wanting to play and be around me. They know I'm all in on winning.
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