Growing up, I was a Detroit Pistons fan, being from Flint. During not the Bad Boys but Chauncey Billups and Ben Wallace era, and growing up, I always wanted to be a Piston.

I was always thankful for the YMCA. Of course, growing up, you don't really think about it, because when you're a kid, you're in your own world. But back then, it was just so much. I'm going to go the Y, hanging out, playing games all day, playing basketball.

Coming from Flint, I was really immature on the court and off the court.

Growing up, I was always that kid that kinda watched All-Star Weekend on TV, every event.

Every Olympics, when I was growing up and playing basketball, my parents and I made it a point to sit down and watch the U.S.A. compete. To join that team later, and play and practice one-on-one with David Robinson, Larry Bird, Chris Mullens and all these guys I looked up to, was a dream come true.

The thing about the Super Bowl is, once you got to the Super Bowl City, it was non-stop football, 24/7. You couldn't get away from it. You couldn't leave your hotel room and not get bombarded by fans. You couldn't go have a nice dinner and relax. Friends and family weren't there, so the normalcy of life changed.

I just want kids to have a chance to go and try an Olympic sport. Every kid has a bike - that's how I started, and one kid coming along and giving it a go could make that journey to the Olympics.

What got me into MMA first was that I was a wrestler, and I was a gangbanger getting into trouble a lot and getting into fights. I grew up in a family of 15 in a four-bedroom house. It was dysfunctional, so that alone made me want to be an MMA fighter. It's really the only sport where you gotta basically depend on yourself.