"The difference of the American way of doing business and the Japanese way of doing business. It’s huge, the difference. I just feel like I came to Mars when I came to the UFC."Click here for more interviews.
"In Japan, it just wasn’t like this," Filipovic said. "In Japan, I just came, the driver picked me up at the airport. I always stayed in the same hotel. I was the only fighter there. Here, we are meeting our opponents, [other] fighters. People don’t really know the level of disruption. There are parties during the night that wake you up. There are maybe 3-4 fighters plus their corner men, and they’re doing madness during the night. That makes you nervous. I didn’t have any of that before in Japan. I had my peace. I just don’t like it."
"It was a bad time for me," Filipovic said of when he joined the UFC. "I was sick of everything, of training. I’d just won the Grand Prix in PRIDE. To tell you the truth, the money attracted me here. The money attracted me because I knew PRIDE was going to be finished. But that is the worst motivation, to fight only for money."
"I trained some, but not the way I should have. Then, I underestimated the phenomenon called the cage. It’s a huge difference in your career. The cage is twice bigger than the ring; there are no ropes. It’s different rules. It was a shock for me. "It’s also a different kind of public. That was a shock for me. In Japan when you’re fighting, you feel like you’re in Vienna at a concert listening to some opera. Everybody’s quiet. They keep quiet. When you do some moves, they go, ‘Ooooh.’ Here, people are screaming and this and that. It’s a different mentality. All those things are small, but put them together and it was a big thing for me."
HT: mmaweekly.com, transcribed by sports.yahoo.com
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