I Never Aspired To Be 2nd. I

I'm Living Such A Lucky And Blessed Life And I'm Trying My Best To Deserve It.

For Me, Mma Is Like Speed Chess. It's Like I'm Herding A Person Into A Certain Position. Say My Endgame Is An Arm Bar. I'm Not Gonna Actually Take You And Put You There. What I'm Going To Do Is Convince You That It's A Good Idea To Move In The Direction I Want You To Go.

I Don't Want Little Girls To Have The Same Ambitions As Me. But I Want Them To Know That It's Okay To Be Ambitious.

There Have Been Times In My Adolescence Where I Gave Up. I Was Like, 'i'm Just Never Going To Be Pretty. I'm Never Going To Be Like One Of Those People On The Front Of Magazines.' It Always Seemed Really Strange To Me That The Projection Of How People Are In Advertisements Looked Nothing Like The People Who Were Actually Buying Them. You Know What I Mean? I Never Understood That Mismatch, And Now I Really Start To See That The People You See In The Media Are A Lot More Like People Actually Are.

When I Looked At The State Of Women's Mma, What I Saw Was That It Was Missing Rivalries Or Anything Theatrical About It. Everybody Was Trying To Be Miss America, Unwilling To Go Under Any Kind Of Criticism, And Taking The Safe Answers. I Thought I Needed To Do Whatever I Could To Get Attention.