I was an underdog my whole career, but I knew I had the ability to compete with those guys.

Heavyweight championship. People want to see the big guys bang. Other champions are great, too. But ain't nothing like seeing the big guys throw down.

My mother ran the household. In grade school, I came home crying one day. She said, 'What's wrong?' and I said, 'This kid said he was going to jump on me.' She grabbed me and slammed me on the floor. 'If you don't go out there and stand up for yourself, it's going to be me and you.' I didn't want that to happen.

My training sessions were nice, calm, and quiet. Just me and my trainers in the gym.

You find your limits by going out and trying. We're just like anybody else in any other job. You just can't work 90 hour weeks. You can't do it. We can't sing seven days a week.

You get nervous when you're identified with something that is really great and positive for so long. You don't want to not be that person, but there are going to be other roles in your career.

I took a $40k pay cut to leave my technical copywriter job and work for $6k a year.

Well, my father was in the Army and we traveled quite a bit when I was growing up, and I thought that I would like to have a military career, although I was drawn more towards the Navy.