A Quote by Diego Sanchez

The B.J. Penn fight was the first one where I ever took damage. I got caught coming in. I got hit hard and I never recovered. He picked me apart the rest of the fight. After that, I still didn't take any damage until I fought Martin Kampmann.
Martin Kampmann, that was a war. Jake Ellenberger, that was a war. Then I didn't take damage until Gilbert Melendez.
First of all, I was a good Christian kid. My mom and dad taught me never to fight. So I never fought. The other kids picked that up right away. They said, 'Oh, he's not going to try to do anything.' They'd push me, shove me, hit me. I'd just stand there and take it.
After I won my first amateur fight, I figured I would do fighting on the side while I was going to school. I got an offer after that amateur fight to take a professional fight. The opponent kind of wanted to have an easy win for her pro debt, and they said they'd pay me $1,500. I was like, 'Yeah, might as well get paid for what I was doing.'
I've never fought with anyone. A lot of people talk to me, and they're like, 'Oh, you would have been fighting all the time when you were younger,' but I'm like, 'I never fought with anyone because I always knew that if I hurt myself, I might lose important time in my cricket career,' so I never got into any fight, ever in my life.
Tito Ortiz vs. Chuck Liddell III, the fight that all the fans wanted to see for the longest time and never got a chance to. I never got a fair shake when I was with the UFC against Chuck, any of the times I ever fought against him.
When I fought Kampmann, something happened in that fight and to me, it's still the most epic moment in my career. I was losing and something happened and I flipped a switch.
After my Clay Guida fight, I went down a bad path, man. It was just not a good path. After my loss to B.J. Penn it just got worse. I got really out of control.
My favorite fight was when I fought Rampage. I always wanted to fight Rampage because of the way he fights. It's about pride. The way he comes forward. My friends in Brazil would always tell me they wanted me to fight Rampage. When I fought him, it was a big deal for me. It was the first big fight I was in. It was a great fight.
Liam Smith hasn't got a belt, but I can get excited about that fight. If they pay me seven figures for the fight, I'll take that fight.
When I fought Holmes, I feel I was a better fighter than he was. I was just so caught up in what was written about the fight - I got caught up in that whole thing.
I have a fierce will to live. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others - and I am one of those - never give up. We fight and fight and fight. We fight no matter the cost of battle, the losses we take, the improbability of success. We fight to the very end.
For years and years, I convinced myself that I was unbreakable, an animal with an animal strength or something not human at all. Me, I told people, I take damage like a wall, a brick wall that never falls down, never feels anything, never flinches or remembers. I am one woman but I carry in my body all the stories I have ever been told, women I have known, women who have taken damage until they tell themselves they can feel no pain at all.
Gil Clancy told me to move around for six or seven rounds, but when you're a puncher and you catch someone, you got after them. And in that fight [with George Foreman in 1999] my timing was off and I got caught.
I got messed up between my fight with Ken Norton and my fight with Larry Holmes; I got messed up with alcohol. I needed at least a year more experience, with three or four more fights before I fought Holmes. But I couldn't get any fights. Don King had all the contenders, and unless I signed myself over to him, I couldn't get a fight.
You rarely see one punch kill anybody. I mean, Davey Moore died, the first fight I ever worked for the title, my guy fought and was getting killed, and he hit Davey Moore. Davey Moore went down. There was no bottom rope to it. I then put bottom rope to it, when I got in power. Hit his head. One blow, hit his head and died.
Madison Square Garden, November 1984. I don't recall taking too much fear into the ring. I knew I could fight. But I got a big shock. They put me in with this rough, tough veteran called Lionel Byarm. He tested me to the limit. But I fought my heart out and, in the end, I prevailed. The story of my life, in my very first fight.
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