Anytime you spar at a new dojo, whether it's in Japan, Brazil, or Thailand, the fighters come after the new guy. It's a way to test yourself against the best and to sharpen your technical skills and push yourself to be the best you can be.
To have the athletes weigh in on a stage, televised, it makes no sense. Holding us at weight to run us through medicals and a staging process, it lengthens the time we're depleting ourselves.
The highs and lows of Vitor Belfort, I would not want to be that guy. Be on top of the world getting all these 'knockouts of the night' and all these awards of the year and then all of a sudden get shunned into the shadows. He leads a shady life, and it seems like karma might be coming back.
I get more relaxed. I get looser. I get more technical, I get faster, and you get to see way more of my game in the later rounds. In sparring, a lot of my best rounds are my third and my fourth. My fifth rounds are sometimes my best of all.
An interim title is just a guarantee at a title shot. If I'm going to fight the best guys in the world, I want a guarantee that I'm going to fight for the title.
I used to goof off a lot.
