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Inspired by Kobe's competitiveness, ex-NBAer Royce White chases dream to be UFC heavyweight champ
By Kevin Iole
“One of the benefits of starting later is that you get to have a sense of calling,” Royce White said. “I hope to be able to bridge the world between basketball and MMA. I don’t mean basketball players, but I mean the neighborhoods around the country where I came from where guys choose to play basketball at an early age. If I can help to inject that kind of enthusiasm about mixed martial arts into those communities and we start to get a lot of those NBA-level athletes, NBA-level talents, to venture into mixed martial arts, I think that will eventually expand mixed martial arts greatly.
“I do think that the Kobe Bryants of the world would select MMA at least some of the time if they had a proper understanding of it and an approach to the purity of the competition.”
“He was a naysayer silencer,” White said. “He was driven by silencing the naysayers, and he did it in a way where he’d say, ‘It’s not that I’m giving you that much credit as naysayers, but I am getting a bit of satisfaction knowing you were out there naysaying when I broke through. That’s the Mamba mentality and that’s what I think you need to bring to your job as a high-level professional athlete if you’re serious about succeeding. I believe in what I’m doing. I believe in my coaches.”
https://sports.yahoo.com/inspired-b...am-to-be-ufc-heavyweight-champ-225807655.html
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