Really, it was either fight in the UFC or fight in the WWE. There wasn't the option of both. That was a key factor. What am I going to do? I didn't want to juggle two careers anyway.
Boxing is not that complicated. If two guys want to fight, it's not hard to make a fight. If the fight's not made, it's because one party doesn't want that fight, or maybe both parties don't want it.
In the UFC, you are only as good as your last fight. It's really a fight-by-fight type of career in the UFC.
It was going to be really tough to juggle the two as far as rehab and strength training, getting the shoulder back to where it needed to be and also worrying about the weight cut. We thought as a team that the best option for me right now with the recovery was to stay at middleweight, for this fight at least. We'll see what happens after this.
A mega fight to me is a fight that I am in and people think I am going to lose. I am the underdog. Golovkin, it's a perfect fight. It's a hard fight, but a fight that I think I have a fantastic chance of beating him. He's not the biggest middleweight, so if he moves up in weight, I am going to have the size advantage.
When I watched the first fight between Woodley and Thompson, and I want to make clear that I really admire both guys, for me the fight was really boring at UFC 205 because nobody pulled the trigger for three rounds. The fourth round there was a scramble and that was really exciting, but then the fifth round was so-so again.
I did my part. I signed it for UFC 205 in New York. I signed my part, and Julianna turned it down. She didn't want to fight that time, but I don't care about this because I am a fighter, and if she don't want fight, we was looking for another opponent to make fight.
I signed a contract to fight at UFC 187, so I'm going to fight at UFC 187, whoever it is against. It's the same thing.
I don't want to fight in UFC just because I was a champion in UFC. I'm gonna have to earn it. It's gonna have to be how I fight.
The great thing about rock n' roll is, if you want to fight - like, fight the system, fight the man, fight the government, fight the people in front of you - it's Don Quixote all over again. You're really chasing windmills.
If Brock Lesnar wants to fight in UFC, Brock Lesnar will fight in UFC. If Brock Lesnar wants to fight in WWE, he will fight in WWE.
If I am 100% prepared for the fight, my opponent has no chance to win the fight. I am saying what I mean: He has a 0% chance to win the fight. There is going to be no luck involved; there is going to be nothing else to stop me from winning the fight.
It takes two people to fight, and it takes two companies to sit down and figure it out and decide what network we're going to fight on, where we're going to fight, what the purses are going to be.
I feel like a fight is a season. When you're in the UFC, one fight is the equivalent of a whole football season, so when you lose a fight, the fans only remember you from your last fight, so it's very important to perform well, and to keep winning.
I really didn't want to enter the UFC in a fight that nobody really cared about or where people thought I was just going to whoop some guy.
I don't want to be one of those guys who says, 'No, I won't fight that guy' or 'I won't fight the guy there; I need to fight him here,' or that sort of stuff. The UFC says, 'This is who you're fighting next,' and I say, 'Cool. Let's do it.'
After the Ronda fight, I wasn't sure what the UFC held for me. I think coming out of that fight, I didn't know if losing that fight meant that I could get cut because I knew the rumors at the time was how easily fighters could get cut from the UFC.