Michael Chandler on Heart

Michael Chandler talking about heart with Fight Magazine:

I think the most important attribute of mixed martial arts, or aspect of it, is definitely the heart. With heart, comes cardio, because you could have horrible cardio but a huge heart, and all of a sudden your cardio is a lot better because of the heart that you have. So I would definitely say it's heart. You could have the best hands in the world, the best wrestling in the world, the best grappling in the world, but when the going gets tough, when it's late in the round, whenever you're getting a flurry of punches, you're getting beat up, do you have what it takes to dig deep and really take a hold of what is yours? Or what you think that you deserve.  And you have to believe that you deserve great things. You have to believe that you deserve to win each fight that you're in. You have to believe that you deserve to become a champion. And I think that all comes from that champion's mentality, which all starts from your heart. How big is your heart? And I think the hard work is what is what makes your heart grow every single day. You know, "the heart", it's an organ, but whenever you talk about heart you know you're talking about your will, your will to win, your determination. And that all comes from how much do you believe that what you've done here in the gym is going to translate into the fight. How much did you believe that what you did in the gym here was above and beyond what you needed to do, and above and beyond what your opponent has done. Whenever I step into the cage; no disrespect to any of my opponents, even the best guys that I've fought, but I know that they've never even come close to going through what I've gone through. With my wrestling background, wrestling five years at the University of Missouri, there's no way that they've even scratched the surface of the hell that I've put myself through. It's such a blessing to have that in my back pocket where I can just go and just deposit it from the heart bank, if you will. I've just accumulated and accumulated so much will and so much determination in my past that now when the going gets tough...I'm just used to it, I try to act as tough as I can and as much like a warrior as I can, and good things happen.