My first real business was bootlegging T-shirts - I was just a dumb kid. You go to a concert and pay $25 for a cotton T-shirt that says 'Rolling Stones,' 'Lollapalooza,' or whatever. On the outside they're 10 or 15 bucks. We were the guys selling them for 10 or 15 bucks.
There's a lot of guys who use their likeness - to do movies, and do other business stuff, but not too many guys are actually making product. I'm making product, it's a different thing. A lot of guys are holding up Coke cans and get paid a lot of money to do that, but no one's making a Coke can. I'm the guy that's trying to make the Coke can.
It's not like being a professional basketball player where you're in a big house. Maybe three, four or five guys make a couple million bucks a year, but that's it. The rest of them have second jobs.
I want to be in my prime making the big money, enough money to put away so I can do something.
I'm a prize fighter. Titles don't pay bills. I fight for money. I'm making money. They're making money. Everybody's making money. That's what this is all about.
I love fighting big guys because I'm fast. I'm not a big, light heavyweight. I can move. I can get inside on them. I'm inside, I'm wrestling with them, and they're just wrestling, but all the time, I'm chopping; I'm slapping.
There ain't no clean way to make a hundred million bucks.... Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them... Decent people lost their jobs.... Big money is big power and big power gets used wrong. It's the system.
I'm just asking for a fair shake. You see a lot of these guys, a lot of these other champions making what they're making. I'm not trying to take anything away from them, but I feel like I'm one of the more exciting fighters under contract in the UFC.
I love attacking and racing aggressively, and obviously it's a big bonus when you're making an attack and you look around and you see the guys making faces because they're in pain, that just gives you that extra little percent to make them hurt even more.
I've passed on a lot of huge-money jobs. Money doesn't enter into the decision-making. If I do a big blockbuster, it's about how big an audience you'll get and where you can take them.
I sort of got off on making bad guys sweat. Which was not unlike my love of making good guys sweat, just by very different means.
The goal is to win. It's not about making money. I have many much less risky ways of making money than this (buying Chelsea football club). I don't want to throw my money away, but it's really about having fun and that means success and trophies.
I defeated Dan Henderson, he's making tons more money than me. I defeated Mark Hunt. How is it possible Mark Hunt is making $800,000 with a record of 10-10?
I like to play golf. You know, make a little money, lose a little money. Get 10 bucks, lose 20 bucks.
I'm loving life, making money doing what I love to do, making good money and living comfortably. I drive a corvette and live in L.A., baby!
I'd be at someone's house or be up on the roof all day and I'd get lonely - stir crazy - and talk radio became this soothing voice in my life. But the idea that I was making $10 an hour and stacking drywall while these guys were making a few hundred thousand, and they were having a party, and there were Playmates and there were good times, I just couldn't imagine it.