Ask José Mourinho, he wouldn't know a thing about me, my sport - he knows football, and to get to high levels you have to be insane, nothing else means anything.

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.

My name, the McGregor name, my family's motto ... means royal is in my blood. That goes way back. So for [Aldo] to say he is the king and I am the joker, if this was a different time, I would invade his favela on horseback and kill anyone that was not fit to work. But we are in a new time. So I'll whoop his ass in July.

I eat, sleep and breathe training.

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 I am the greatest fighter in any class.

I daydream too. I visualise. I think ahead, I can do it now, sitting here. I think ahead to the walk-in, I can hear the crowd, the music, I can feel the cameras all around me, I can feel movements in my body as I am heading there, I can bring up that incredible feeling you get when you step into the cage.