I did a lot of tae kwon do and branched off into other stuff later on, but tae kwon do is great. It was my equalizer. That was how I was able to survive in the land of the giants. Thank God for that.
When I first started training Tae Kwon Do, it was more just for discipline. My brother and I were two knuckleheads and my mom being a single mother wanted us to get more discipline somewhere other than her yelling at us. But I had no visions at all or aspirations of going from Tae Kwon Do into mixed martial arts.
When most people think of Tae Kwon Do - which, in the United States, is not all that often - they think of sparring, a form of competition that both men and women perform at the Olympics.
I'm a black belt in tae kwon do.
When I was growing up, there were times I had to compete against boys in tae kwon do, and I'd show them right away that I wasn't someone to mess with.
My martial arts background is Tae Kwon Do.
I learned Tae Kwon Do and gymnastics and I have a trainer.
I don't know if there's anything intrinsically funny about Tae Kwon Do.
I actually take karate and tae-kwon-do. And so I love sparring and grappling and all that physical stuff. I studied a hybrid form of grappling, sparring, and self defense; it's more of a 'get yourself in shape,' and if you want to take it to the next level, so you're really learning valuable skills with self defense, and I really enjoy it.
When you're a child, you take things for granted. For instance, my mum didn't have a lot of money, but I went to piano, ballet and gymnastics lessons, and tae kwon do.
When I tell people I'm going to the Olympics, they're like: 'What do you do, track and field? Pole vault? Are you a volleyball player?' No one ever guesses tae kwon do.
I'm a 3rd degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and 2nd degree in karate, and I'm a licensed bodyguard.
I belong to an improv group, I play cello, I have these phases - fencing, tae kwon do, baseball, ice hockey, boogie boarding in the summer, snowboarding in the winter.
Actors have a different kind of existence because they blow up over night into superstars in their early 20s. Let's say you were a superstar in your early 20s and somebody gave you millions of dollars, I mean come on. Let's be honest here, we don't know anything in our 20s.
Chris Brown owns 14 of my belts. Swizz Beatz owns a zillion of my belts. They were supporting me before I was even anybody.
In my early 20s, I studied history and politics, and I really thought that perhaps I would devote my life to that.