A lot of guys man, they are dull and dry.

If I'm only fighting once or twice a year, that's just not going to be enough to make a dent in the sport or enough financially for me to get myself to where I want to be and position myself.

This is the weirdest thing. I've been told one thing, that all these guys turned me down, x,y, z. I take to Twitter and some of these guys are like, 'Yeah, I'll take the fight,' then you don't hear anything of it for the next few weeks.

I'm like, 'Man, if I'm going to have this idle time, I might as well be in school, do something positive where I'm not just wasting my prime years and not getting something else in return.' If I'm in school and training, that's OK. I did that in college. It worked.

People can say the media stuff drains you and everything, but you set everything up accordingly to the schedule.

I lost as amateur, I lost a bunch of times as a wrestler, and you always come back.

You show your teeth more when you show what you're made of and your heart.

About this sport, you gotta kind of stay active. If you're not active, you're easily forgotten. It's like out of sight, out of mind.

I want to have a bank account that represents me being a pro athlete.

Whether it's Bellator, OneFC, World Series, whatever, the door's open for me. Financial stability is the most important thing for me.

To be in the UFC and have the name but not the earnings, good for you, you get a hand clasp and a shake and a don't let the door hit you on the way out sort of thing.

I want to exit from this sport with my head intact.

At the end of the day, I know what I bring to the table.

You go out there and say I fight for the UFC, people know exactly what that is.

You cant really put a value on the UFC name. That alone has value in itself.

I don't want to be resentful to the sport. I want to be able to leave the sport on a high note.

I want to be in my prime making the big money, enough money to put away so I can do something.

You just take your hits on the chin and move on, that's life.

I've never been one to shy away from a challenge and I've never been one to shay away from talking a big game.

I like to put my money where my mouth is and go out there and perform and do what I gotta do.

It's MMA, man, the wild, wild west. You can just expect that anything can happen, and that's just where I'm at with things.

I'm in this to change my life, to change my fortunes. I'm not in there to just fight for free.

I fight for people's entertainment, but at the same time that entertainment comes at a cost.

I got to the pinnacle of the sport for a reason and that's to make money. I didn't come here just to give handouts.

I'm a lot bigger than Faber, I'm pretty sure I'm a lot stronger than Faber and I'm pretty sure I'm a lot faster than Faber.

You can't keep a star from shining and my star's going to shine bright.

It's the fight game. I'm ready for everything.

We're all fighting for a reason. We're not fighting to just fight. There's got to be some type of reward at the end of the rainbow and that reward is a big, shiny, UFC gold belt. That changes every fighter's life dramatically for the better.

If we're just going to have contenders fighting just to fight, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Then I might as well just start jumping around divisions too because there's a lot of fun fights for myself in other divisions that I think I would love to entertain.

I'm too long, I'm too rangy, I can box, I can kick, I can wrestle, I can do jiu-jitsu.

Even when I teach my MMA classes in the gym, it's hard to teach what I do. It's more of state of flow, a state of feel. It's not a robotic thing like one, two, three, kick, one, two, three, switch, jab, cross. It's completely unorthodox. Everything is about rhythm, tempo and pace. It's a different style, man.

I bring the funk. It's a different style.

My comfortability is always going favor the grappling side, that's the path of least resistance. But, I don't need necessarily need to force the takedowns like I used to before.

At the end of the day, Cejudo's a tough competitor but I think he's a flyweight.

I'm not about trying to hand pick my fights and tip toe around the competition.

I'm about fighting the best guys.

I always felt like the UFC brass kind of had it out for me.

At the end of the day, I feel like I've never had an easy break in terms of opponents.

MMA is not one of those up and down basketball seasons where you have a ton of games and you can still make the playoffs. It doesn't work like that in MMA. You get a couple losses, you get washed up, you get the door slammed behind you and they bring in the next person behind you who is here to take your place.

Fighters don't just fight. Not the good ones who have long, long success. The guys who make championship runs. The guys who fight for world titles. They get fizzled out, chewed up and spit out like a revolving door and then the next guy or the next female comes in to take their spot.

Do you think the UFC is going to owe you a favor when you step up on short notice when nobody else is doing it? There's a reason a whole bunch of us aren't doing it. If you want to be that scapegoat, and think that the UFC's going to owe you one, good luck with that. Let me know how that goes.

As history has shown, I don't think the UFC is in the business of doing favors for other people.

When you look at the U.S., it's a little weird, man because we have so many other sports and other things that we can watch and support that it's hard to get the support of an entire country around you.

Obviously, I rep Jamaica. I'm a first generation born Jamaican-American. My parents are born and raised in Jamaica, my grandparents are born and raised in Jamaica, my other family still lives in Jamaica, and I still go back there.

I think everyone is kind of an immigrant somehow, and I wasn't raised in an American society at home. My household was a Jamaican household, so I got all my traditions, all my roots and culture intact, so I'm able to support both countries.

There's a lot of American citizens out there that do jobs that they hate, day in and day out. For me to do what I love to do, with people that I like and enjoy being around who are chasing the same dream, same passions, to have that around you day in and day out, I think it says a lot.

I can never complain about the situation that I'm in. I try to put everything into perspective.

I'm always a guy that looks at every situation as glass half full.

You put me in there with anybody at '35 or '45, I get on your back, I take you down, it's going to be a long night and it's a dangerous situation to be in.

You change the mind and world of one individual and that's huge, man. You reach one person and that starts a spiral effect and starts to snowball. I think that's the one thing as an athlete we should all focus on doing and that's striving to give back in a positive manner.