That first loss in the UFC was a tough one. I hadn't fought in a year, and you start again, different organisation, different scenario, and it all plays into it.
Even in my first year in the UFC I fought five times in the year.
It's been tough throughout my career having different coaches and different philosophies, different style of plays throughout this entire time.
Things can change quickly in the UFC. I lost to Nate Marquardt in my first loss as a middleweight and then I defeated Dan Miller and fought for the title against Anderson Silva.
Soon he'll come in again and kiss me, but differently. He'll be different and so I'll be different. It'll be different. I thought, 'It'll be different, different. It must be different.
Plays are wonderfully different than short stories, first because it's a story that's on a stage, but there's a different sort of tension that appears on stage - you get to see your characters in a different way - like with lights.
When I fought in the amateurs and fought New York guys, they had a different swag, a different style, and maybe they didn't take a liking to Texas fighters to begin with.
Guys that get that second year under their belt, get the first year under your belt, you come back with a different swag and a different confidence, a different pace to your game. You can showcase what you've been working throughout the summer.
There aren't any negative thoughts about my time in Detroit; I just didn't play. Sometimes you have to go through that at different stages. I went through it during a tough period, my first year in the league, but it was a good year for me off the court.
I think every year that comes, comes with different games, different kinds of players, different coaches and different philosophies, I know that.
I been me from day one, I'm not 'bout to start acting different, talking different, treating people different, or looking different.
The Little Friend is a long book. It's also completely different from my first novel: different landscape, different characters, different use of language and diction, different approach to story.
One has to take several different shots of a subject, from different points of view and in different situations, as if one examined it in the round rather than looked through the same key-hole again and again.
UFC is not a competitor to the WWE because we are entertainment and UFC is competitive sport. It's very different.
Every year is different and every team is different. Your talent is different, how it gets is different, your leadership is different. That's one of the things that I really enjoy about it [coaching] - trying to maximize the potential of your team relative to how it changes every year.
If what we think now is different from what we thought then, we can take it for granted that what we think in a year will be different again.
But the battles against loneliness that I fought when I was 16 are very different from those I fought when I was 27, and those are very different from the ones I fight at 44.