36-year-old Diego Sanchez has been in the UFC for 13 years. He has experienced many highs, such as being the winner of the first season of The Ultimate Fighter tournament (middleweight) and rallying up Fight of the Nights five times. Sanchez’s recent lows, however, have dimmed fans’ expectation for Sanchez to the point where many have called for him to retire. But a life outside of fighting is something Diego Sanchez is not prepared for:

“The thought of after fighting is not here in this mind the way it is in these other fighters,” Diego Sanchez told MMAjunkie. “That’s why they’ve all came and gone, that’s why they’ve all opened up gyms and become businessman and gone on to other careers. In my mind that’s never been an option. Plan A was the only way. There wasn’t a Plan B because Plan A is the only way. My vision and my focus was Plan A. There may be a lot of distractions along the road. I have hit some distractions, and I have also hit some failures. There’s been some real bumps in the road.

“It’s not easy. It’s not easy to keep your dream alive. It’s not. There was a point where I even lost it. I said, ‘You know, maybe I can’t become UFC champion. Let’s be like ‘Cowboy’ (Cerrone) and just fight as many fights as we can and make as much good money as we can while we can.’ But the fire in my heart, it never died for that UFC championship belt. It just died down.”

With Diego Sanchez getting KO/TKOed in three of his last four fights, including his last two (Al Iaquinta and Matt Brown), there has been an increase in the number of retirement pleas from fans, but Sanchez is determined to continue drowning them out:

“I don’t care what the keyboard warriors of the world have to say,” Sanchez said. “‘Oh, he’s punch drunk and he’s brain dead and please retire.’ They say, ‘Please retire, Diego. Please retire.’ Because they want me to be average like them. They want me to fall into that textbook of normal, normalcy. That’s not me. I am the anomaly to that textbook. I am the way, way way, outside the box weird guy that’s freakin’ like an alien. ‘This guy’s an alien, he’s like The Iceman Wim Hof. At 52 years old running marathons in the desert without a drip of water. Breaking Guinness World Records.’ That’s the type of mindset that I’m on. I’m tapping into my primitive brain. I’m on some next-level mind, body, spirit.”

“I’m just still getting better. I’m getting better and better and better and better. The crazy thing is I’m so healthy right now. My mind is healthy, my body is healthy. I’m healthy all the way around, and I feel great. For this fighting stuff I’m just going to do what God put me here to do.

“I’m a warrior, I’m a fighter,” Sanchez continued. “No one knows how long they’ve live. No one knows what’s going to happen in their life, if they’re going to get cancer, if they’re going to get hit by a truck, or a train like Matt Hughes. No one knows when is the next day, but for me, I’m going to continue to do what I love and I’m living for this. I’m living for this dream that’s in my heart, and in the end it will be like a Michael Bisping story where God gets all the glory in the end.”