Not since 2011, when I stepped into the cage and fought Eddie Alvarez for the first time and was the extreme underdog – I’ve never quite had that feeling of a 10 since then.
When you get in the cage with me, you’d better be ready to go 35 minutes, not just 15.
I got a short – I got a temper. I fight in a cage for a living. There’s a reason people like us are wired slightly different.
There aren’t a lot of African-American superheroes. I’ve been reading comics since I was eight or nine years old. Luke Cage stood out.
I really liked the snake that breaks out of the cage in the beginning of the movie. I saw it in real life, and it was really cool. Really big and fat. The owls are cool as well, but you can’t really pet them.
I think the fact that ‘Black Lightning,’ ‘Luke Cage’ and ‘Black Panther’ have each made noise in their own way will only lead to different superheroes and different genres.
Aspen Ladd is quite the enigma. She looks and acts like a Girl Scout out of the cage, but in there she is an absolute beast.
I want to thank all of my opponents. Iron sharpens iron, and every great victory or crushing defeat occurred because there was someone who trained hard and had the courage to meet me across the cage.
There is a great suspicion of saying that anyone, especially a child, is ‘the product of destiny,’ or ‘formed by fate,’ or ‘predestined for a certain life.’ I am suspicious, too, of efforts to cage children or adults in preconceived ideas of who they are or should be.
I underestimated the difference of fighting in a cage.
I don’t put the truth in a cage. I try to find a way to release it.
When people refer to a cage fight as war, I think it’s kinda cute… A war, huh? You know what a war is? They, evidently, don’t. It’s not maybe their place to know what it is, but I do.
A cage that allows someone to walk around inside of it is still a cage.
UFC is street fighting in a cage. Boxing is a controlled, skilled talent. There’s no comparison.
I’ve worked with ‘Dream Girls’ here in Los Angeles and have done ‘La Cage Aux Folles’ in Vegas, traveled to London in 1999 and South America in 2001.
Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.
I was in ‘Seussical,’ and I was in a cage onstage in a purple yarn suit singing backup, and I was like: ‘I’ve had it. I can’t do this anymore.’ I will say for the record that I did love the show, but I was like: ‘I want to do something else. I need a little more.’
When I was 7 and went to the zoo with my second-grade class, I saw chimpanzee eyes for the first time – the eyes of an unhappy animal, all alone, locked in a bare, concrete-floored, iron-barred cage in one of the nastier, old-fashioned zoos. I remember looking at the chimp, then looking away.
Getting in the cage, it’s not like I need a whole mental preparation for it. It’s just a fight.
At the end of the day, when I step in that cage, I’m there to fight for my name. It’s not about money; it’s not about who’s gonna win or lose. It’s about me winning. That’s all that matters.
Fighting in the cage brings much more adrenaline than fighting in the ring. When you step inside the Octagon and they close the door, that’s really a high adrenaline feeling because they enclose you and one guy in the cage.
I always take everything serious when it comes to my career and my life, but this decision to go back to the cage is a big decision for me.
I remember the first time I climbed the cage – it was almost like a challenge from Snuka. I said, ‘This is crazy. This is absolutely crazy!’ I went ahead and did it but I only did it a couple of times. It scared me half to death.
I always respected Luke Cage and thought that he was interesting, and I really liked what Brian Michael Bendis did in his update of the character in ‘Alias,’ the comic.
I don’t like the way the cage is set up. I think it’s really dangerous that the metal comes up about three inches off the ground. People were putting their foot on it. I can see it. And I was worried about being taken down and landing backwards with my elbow. and damaging my elbow or even my head.
Benson is a champion. I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t scared to death inside this cage, stepping into the cage with that monster.
I’m not sure why working at a homeless shelter made sense to me, except that I needed to immerse myself in some sort of larger real-life situation to get me out of the cage of my mind, in some ways.
We are domesticated animals, revolving in a cage which we have built for ourselves – with its contentions, wranglings, its impossible political leaders, its gurus who exploit our self-conceit and their own with great refinement or rather crudely.
I would love to have a Divas Hardcore championship. If we had a hardcore cage, we’ll just paint the cage pink or something and make it extra girly so it’s so, like, Diva.
I train in the cage all the time. I have my own cage in my gym.
I don’t think Luke Cage as a superhero is something that has changed dramatically from the ’70s to now. He’s a black man going through the same thing as other people of colour – it’s just that he has superpowers.
I am completely prepared to let the tiger out of its cage in Sochi and see what happens.
Band of Skulls is joining Cage the Elephant as my new musical caffeine.
I was in Australia in 1983 and did a stunt in a lion’s cage.
Cain’s an animal, man. Cain’s a competitor. I want to spar with Cain because I know if I’m able to hang with him here in the gym, once I get out there in the cage and fight, I mean, I’ve already gone toe-to-toe with Cain Velasquez, you know?
I think anyone in New York City could look at Luke Cage and say, ‘Hey, this guy could help me out.’ I don’t want him to just seem like a relevant hero for only black people.
Big mouths can’t do anything, you have to prove it in the cage.
I have a tendency to kick it up. I like to rattle the cage.
‘Luke Cage’ came out in 1972 at the height of the blaxploitation era. It was a literary response to this notion of blaxploitation movies. It was the first time in American culture that Hollywood was embracing black movies.
I’ve gone into cage matches, I’ve gone into Ultimate X, and I’ve said this before: I know exactly what I’ve signed up for, and I’m not afraid of anything in front of me, and I’m willing to do anything and whatever it takes to come out with my hand raised.
Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.
I have this creative mind where I can create a lot of different things, but a lot of people never really gave me the chance and opportunity to do that because when they see me, they just see this dumb fighter that fights in the cage and howls like a wolf and knocks people out.
For ‘Luke Cage,’ of course, I was familiar with Power Man and Iron Fist. I read the comics. That was really more stuff that you read for fun. It wasn’t that you read either of those comics for profound moments, although they have profound moments.
I’d rather be known for my talent, for what I can do in the cage. I’m sure that will come.
Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.
The more fights I have the more relaxed I get in cage or ring. It’s all about experience. It’s something that I try to do because I fight better when I am relaxed.
We can’t get in the cage thinking that we’ll win quickly, that we’ll get the knockout.
Put on a camera and put on some whatever, and you’re an actor. Put me in a cage, I’m a fighter. Put me somewhere else – I’m in an ocean, I’m a surfer. I don’t know what I am, I just do it all. And I want to be good at everything.
In a game where it all lies on what you do in that cage, it’s hard to walk out a loser.
Parallels between classical and pop are not new. The whole San Francisco movement of John Cage and Terry Riley went hand in glove with what the Velvet Underground were doing.
I’m doing very well outside the cage.
Imagination is a beast that has to be put in a cage.
I’m just a regular guy, and I think sometimes the persona of an MMA fighter are these superstars who are larger-than life-characters. I’m just me and I only try to be me, a normal guy who is interested in a lot of things and happens to have a talent for fighting in a cage.
I think, as a professional, inside the cage you can fix anything.
There’s nothing nice about the cage. There’s nothing soft about it. It’s nasty. You get in there. You get dirty. You get beat up.
Really, the arc for the first season of ‘Luke Cage’ is ‘hero.’ How does one become a hero? What does one feel about being a hero? How does one live their life and eventually go through the Elizabeth Kubler-Ross stages of grief until the acceptance is, ‘Fine, I’m a hero.’ This is what it is.
I’m always supportive of my brothers who have the guts to step in the cage. Pro wrestling is dangerous but it takes a special kind of courage to lock yourself in a cage that wants to do you harm.
Cage Warriors is a brilliant organisation. They’re doing great things for European MMA, and they’re giving the platform for guys like me who came through. They’re vital. I’m forever grateful for the opportunities I got.
