Athlete

The side of town, the side of Louisiana that I grew up on, there's a lot of poverty.

Every fight is like a different landscape of what you go through. But sometimes it's small injuries. Sometimes it's lessons you walk away with. Every fight is different but they all hurt, for sure.

If I would have thought like fans think, I'd be broke and brain dead and fighting everybody every weekend.

I'm not a matchmaker, I don't know the logic behind the decisions they make.

I've put it all on the line every time, win, lose, or draw, and that's what I want to be left behind in my legacy.

People I grew up with, my family, work in the oil fields. Everyone works a labor job - construction, concrete. All we know is work. It's a physical culture.

This sport is a crazy thing, and what happens, it's unpredictable.

I come from south Louisiana where everyone has a blue-collar work ethic.

They had to re-shape the head of my femur back round. They had to trim my hip socket up a little bit. I had a lot of extra bone growth just from years of stressing it out. Because of that bone growth, it caused an impingement in my hip, which tore my labrum off the bone.

I'm not the same fighter I used to be.

I'm not really chasing rematches.

I'm familiar with adversity.

I'm proud of everything I accomplished in this sport.

No matter where I came from, I'm a fighter.

Of course every fighter, whether they admit it or not, they have aches and pains and they go into fights hurt.

My goal and path is always to get to the mountaintop and be a world champion, and leave a fighting legacy.

Any time Nate Diaz fights, I'm tuning in, I promise you.

I think a lot of fighters are cutting way too much weight.

I want to fight for the real belt, not the interim title.

I want to entertain the fans and put on great fights and have 'Fight of the Nights' and have exiting matchups, but at the same time I want to be the undisputed world champion.