A Quote by Roy Nelson

I just remember I used to go to each tournament to make a couple bucks. I did as a living thing; I got paid to do martial arts, so I'd go to these jiu-jitsu tournaments and make, like, $1000 every time I won the tournament.
I've always been a fan of martial arts, even before I did jiu-jitsu tournaments. I did point karate tournaments and wrestled in high school. To me, it was just an evolution and mixed martial arts was the next step. I just wanted to compete and train in it. I had no illusions of it being a paying gig.
Without wishing to sound arrogant, when I was younger, I used to win every single martial arts tournament I ever entered. I used to enter the under 14s and under 16s, win both gold medals in those, and then go in the men's tournament just for experience, and end up getting a silver medal.
As a 4-year-old, I saw two men competing in the ring, and I thought it was martial arts. I asked my parents if I could do martial arts. So, I was 5 or 6-years-old, and I was doing karate and jiu-jitsu. Later on, I started kickboxing. Then, it just progressed. I did a little bit of everything, but predominantly, I did kickboxing.
For me, I learnt from jiu-jitsu and martial arts to be humble and to go forward in life in a positive way.
That was always the top martial artist - the Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt. Once I started beating them, I knew I had what it takes to form a new martial art. That's when I came up with Joe Jitsu, my namesake, so my legacy lives forever through the martial arts.
A lot of tournaments that I can remember I made a few bad shots and I was afraid I would lose the tournament and it seemed to work, the putts seemed to go in. Just the Desire.
It's interesting because my Mixed Martial Arts upbringing is less Brazilian jiu-jitsu, which is the traditional thing that people study.
I like the fact that we have all the teams in the tournament. When I first got here as an assistant, not everyone made the tournament and I think as a coach, you look at it from a job security standpoint, I think that hurt when you didn't have everybody in the tournament.
You cannot just play tournament after tournament like maybe I did when I was 23, 24 years old.
My father didn't compete ever in martial arts tournaments because they were not real. They were tag tournaments or touch tournaments, which he thought was bizarre and not really what the martial arts is about.
I go to the gym every day. That tends to taper off when I'm at a tournament. During tournaments, I'm not trying to build fitness. I'm simply trying to keep away any kind of tension. I go for long walks to clear my head.
I've been doing jiu-jitsu since I was 14 years old. It actually was the martial art that was really stapled in my mind that said, this is what I want to do... I want to do martial arts for the rest of my life.
I don't play a lot of tournaments, but if I don't win a tournament in a year, people are like, 'What in the world is going on?' People don't realize how hard it is to win tournaments. You're not going to go out and play 10 tournaments and win one of them. Your odds aren't that good.
I mean when you go to a network and say, "We want to make a martial arts series in the future." And give them the pitch. And by the way, the only way to achieve the authentic Hong Kong martial arts we need a full-time fight team unit working concurrently, and we're hiring a Chinese fight team from Hong Kong. And they were like, "Great, let's go."
One thing I took - you know, especially from boxing at a young age - from my coach was, if you're a jiu-jitsu guy, and you only cater your training to jiu-jitsu, there's going to come a day and time in your career when you face a guy who is a great wrestler, has great takedown defense, and he's going to make you look silly.
That's one thing that's always helped me as a fighter is that I haven't focused on one thing, like, 'let's make you a jiu-jitsu fighter' or 'let's make you a Muay Thai fighter.' I had nothing when I started, and we work on everything at the same time.
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