I love feeling like I'm inhabiting the body of a ninja, like I could rob a liquor store with my bare hands if I wanted to.
I'm unbelievably ticklish. When I was a little kid, my sisters would hold me down and tickle me until I peed my pants.
I'm selling a product, and I have to be out there; I don't have the option not to be.
I'm the champion for a reason.
Being an athlete, you try to get protein.
See, for some reason, I feel like it's a victory if I wake up one minute before the alarm. It's like I'm in a contest with myself, with my foot kicking around until it wakes up the rest of my body. It's the stupidest thing. But it makes me feel like I've already won something.
You go through every single inch of the emotional spectrum on fight week. You're the most stressed out you've ever been, you're the most pressured you've ever been, you're the happiest you've ever been - it's hard. It's exhausting.
People can say I am a terrible role model because I swear all the time or that I fight people. Look, I don't want little girls to have the same ambitions as me. I want them to know that it is O.K. to be ambitious. I want them to know that it is O.K. to say whatever it is that is on their mind.
I'm scared of failure so much more than any of the other girls I compete against that I work so much harder than they possibly could. I'm totally down with spiders and frogs and heights and snakes - everything; I'm cool with it.
The style I have in judo is very unique... One big advantage a judo player has is they have very good posture and - like, wrestlers, they show when they're about to do a take-down... which judo players don't, and so I kind of incorporate the boxing style with a judo grip and finishing that way.
I go to bed every night thinking about all the possible ways that I can succeed.
People say to me all the time, 'You have no fear.' I tell them, 'No, that's not true. I'm scared all the time. You have to have fear in order to have courage. I'm a courageous person because I'm a scared person.'
When I was in school, martial arts made you a dork, and I became self-conscious that I was too masculine. I was a 16-year-old girl with ringworm and cauliflower ears. People made fun of my arms and called me 'Miss Man.' It wasn't until I got older that I realized: These people are idiots. I'm fabulous.
I'm voting for Bernie Sanders because he doesn't take any corporate money.
I always say you have to be willing to get your heart broken.
Some girls sit around and watch 'Gossip Girl' together. Me and my girlfriends watch 'Raw' and 'SmackDown.'
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.
I wasn't allowed to throw big hooks and overhand rights until I'd been striking for three years. It's so you don't rely on those things from the very beginning. If your footwork sucks, and you can only stand in one place and throw your hands all crazy while the other person is running around, you're never going to be able to hit them.
The bigger my chest is, the more it gets in the way. It just creates space. It makes me much more efficient if I don't have so much in the way between me and my opponent.
If I can represent that body type of women that isn't represented so much in media, then I'd be happy to do that.
I wasn't always the most fashionable, and I would come to school with cauliflower ear and ringworm. I got made fun of a lot. People called me 'Miss Man' and 'Guns,' and people directed a lot of karate jokes at me. I wish that I was at school now that MMA and martial arts is cool, but back when I was in school, people associated it with nerdy stuff.
Kids don't like what they don't understand, and judo was always my social outlet. I always felt really socially awkward, and I couldn't speak very well when I was younger. When I was doing judo, it was something that I could understand and someplace where I felt that I belonged and fit in.
There's something so zen-like and grateful of just ripping a hot wing apart and getting it all over your face, and everyone's happy. I love that atmosphere.
I'm really encouraged by the progress I've seen with what they're doing with the women in WWE, but I feel like there's a lot more than can be done.
A lot of my best clothes I buy at photo shoots because I don't have time to shop.
I love Canadians. They are the coolest, nicest, most patriotic people, and they will support their countrymen no matter what, and I think that's commendable.
Look at my face. Does it look like I can take a good hit?
People say this all the time and everyone, like, nods their head and is like, 'Oh yeah, totally,' but no one ever does it, including myself. I can do better at it, is just drinking a lot of water, like a gallon and a half, two gallons a day, like, straight water all day.
That's the thing I'm worst at: resting. I have to be forced to do it. Sometimes I think of loopholes. 'Oh, I'm just going for a walk, up a dune that's 45 degrees, but I'm walking, so it's not a workout.'
The best way to take a punch is to look at it. Honestly. Someone could hit you with the hardest punch that they have, but as long as you see it, it's not going to knock you out. It's the punches that you don't see that knock you out. So you could get tapped with a small punch, but if you don't see it, you're out.
I go mainly by the Dolce diet. It is a little hard to describe: it's not really a diet but more of a lifestyle. I eat throughout the day; I have three meals and two snacks, and it changes according to what I need at the time.
At 150 pounds, I feel like I'm at my healthiest and my strongest and my most beautiful.
I have a candle permanently on my Jacuzzi because I love me some candles.
I don't think politicians should be allowed to take money for their campaigns from outside interests.
I had a lot of trouble speaking as a kid. I didn't really speak in coherent sentences until I was, like, 6 years old. There was a long time where everybody was very worried, because my sisters were so advanced for their age, and I would barely talk.
The Olympics is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I was lucky enough to go twice, but most people only get one chance. And in judo you can train your whole life and it'll come down to a split second: You can lose everything or win anything.
I might make an investment and lose some money, but that's something I can recover from.
I've separated my shoulder and my collarbone; I've messed up my knee a million times. I've broken my foot in several places. I've broken my toe a bunch, broken my nose a couple of times, and had a bunch of other annoying little injuries, like turf toe and arthritis and tendonitis. It's part of the game.
To be honest, in 2012, I was against both candidates, and so I just picked any third party because I thought if more people voted for third parties then they'd have to take third parties seriously.
I don't lift weights at all. Every muscle on my body is for an actual task; there is no muscle that I train for show. If I want to be able to do a certain move or action, I train really hard until I can. And with all of that training comes muscle definition, so it's really an afterthought.
Nobody's easy until after you beat them.
I don't feel the need to be the hot chick every second of the day. I like to be able to surprise people when I turn it on. I want it to be like the movie 'She's All That' when they unveil her.
It took a lot of time to develop a healthier relationship with food and with my weight.
At the end of the day, I can't curl up with people's opinions.
Reality TV is set up to make people entertaining. A good person with values and principles is not good television.
Even if they don't know it, everyone has the instinct to survive.
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.
A lot of people, once they become champion, they relax, kind of sit in the position and try to enjoy it. But I feel like everything I've ever worked for could be lost at any moment. I work harder and harder and harder, because I want to be farther ahead with every fight, and not worrying about these girls catching up to me.
I like to be part of the change I want to see in the world. Not being afraid of criticism is actually a big advantage.
