Fourteen weeks before the Mendes fight I tore 80 per cent of my ACL [anterior cruciate ligament]. That is the main ligament for stability. Every day in that training camp when I was working my way back, I was saying "real champions fight through any adversity". That is why I am a real champion and he is not. Look at my eye [he had seven stitches put in an old wound after an injury in training the night before we met]. Fighters fight on. Aldo got scared, he went running and I worry he will run again.

I think we should all focus on who we are, what we want to do, and do it. That is my way. I don't know why anyone would want to do that politics stuff.

I do yoga. People think it is easy, just touching your toes. It is hard. But I tend to go with my own flow. It's back to the movement thing. I feel it when I need to train, and I do what I feel I need to do. And when I am in the run-up to a fight, I am really at it the whole time, might be getting my weight down to meet the limit for the division. Soon I am moving up and I am going to be champion in the next one too.

The term "trash talk" is such an American thing. I still laugh at it.

I don't give a f***. We're not fighting. I don't care what anyone thinks about me. All the stuff I have to do outside the fighting, the promotion, this, I don't give a f***. But when I am facing up for a fight, I know what they're thinking. I can read their minds. When I am going face to face with an opponent, nose to nose, I can smell the fear, and I'm feeling no fear at all.

You need to be able to hit, kick, grapple, wrestle, but for me so much of this is about the mind, about feeling you are in complete control of the space around you, and you know what to do at any moment. That is a wonderful feeling, but it doesn't just happen, you have to work for it, train for it, think about it all the time.

Boxing is going to have to catch up with the kind of things UFC is doing. They're getting left behind.