It helps immerse yourself in what you potentially want to do. Being involved, learning firsthand and observing the craft and absorbing all you can, makes it easier to define what you want. It will also ultimately make you a better Chef. Culinary school, or even a single class, is a great bet too.

I think children learning to cook can be such a wonderful thing. It can help build confidence, make them feel good about themselves. It helped me build my ego and even start to get acceptance at school. I'd bring things to class that I'd cooked at home.

If people are made to feel uncomfortable in the kitchen, they won't go in there. That's why I think children learning to cook can be such a wonderful thing.

My goal is to make Italian food clean and accessible and beautiful and tasty, with simple ingredients that people can find at a local grocery store, because people don't want to go to a gourmet shop in search of items that will sit in their pantry for years after they use just a teaspoon or pinch of them.

My heroes always are mostly my parents - my father especially, and my mom, who's passed on already. My dad is a very strong man, and by him being educated, and a principal and school superintendent over 37 years, he plays such a big role in my life.

Stay strong. Stay true to yourself and to who you are because there is community out there. It may not be in your town or perhaps even in your family, but you are wanted and you are loved and there are places in the world where you will be safe and supported.

In the UFC, at first we were like a family, but then it turned corporate. In Bellator, we're family.

Gary is a old factory town right outside Chicago. From my standpoint, my family migrated there in the '50s and '60s from Mississippi - Sardis, Mississippi - shout out to Sardis, Mississippi. My family migrated there just like a lot of black families in that area: they migrated there to get jobs, to get those factory jobs, that steel mill job.