That was my biggest dream, to one day become champion in MMA and boxing. That is my biggest dream.
My father was a bricklayer, and my mother was a housewife. It was complicated, obviously, because of our humble origin, but thank God we were all focused.
I was really close to my father since I was young. He always told me that I had to work in order to become a man, so I had to stay with him when my mother left. He always took me to work to help him as a bricklayer. I was just a kid, so I did what I could do to help him.
Cub Swanson was the first to talk a lot on fight week in the WEC, and I got there and ran through him.
Interim belt is made for media and fans, not for me.
The training is intense here at Nova Uniao.
I was a fan of jujitsu, so that pretty much got me started in fighting. I won a lot of local competitions when I was young and eventually won a ticket to go compete in Rio de Janeiro. In Rio, I struggled a lot in the beginning, living in the gym and not having much to eat, but eventually I joined the Nova Uniao Team and really improved my skills.
