When I'm in there I'm just in my zone. What people think about when they're looking at me, that's their business. If there is a bit of that, I am fine with it, each to his own.

It's gone, boxing's gone. What is there in boxing? Who is there to talk about, who is there that people go, "Yeah I want to fight him?", and fans go "I wanna see that fight"? There's Floyd Mayweather, and he is 38, 39, he's maybe got one fight left. What else is there? He'll have a last fight or two and a couple of guys will get a few million dollars, but way less than I'm gonna be getting in future. This sport is getting bigger all the time, and I am making it bigger.

I am in the fighting game, I don't care about anything else. I don't watch the news, I don't care about politics, I don't care about other sports. I don't care about anything I don't need to care about. This is my sport, it is my life. I study it, I think about it, all the time. Nothing else matters.

I don't use machines - animals don't use machines.

I used to imagine it. I used to pretend that my Peugeot driving to the gym in the rain in Dublin was a Ferrari on the Vegas strip. And now that I have that? I can't even describe that feeling. That's why I like the best - the best cars, the best food, the best watches.

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.

A fight is mental, not just physical and psychological warfare is absolutely part of that.