Alex Caceres exudes confidence as he sits in his Las Vegas hotel room just days before his latest visit to the UFC octagon.
He faces Daniel Pineda on Saturday, 3 June and is full of confidence after a first-round head-kick knockout win in his last fight.
But that hasn’t always been the case for the UFC featherweight.
“I used to be ostracised by many friend groups, even when it came to close friends or my brother’s friends. They always teased me out of the group,” Caceres tells BBC Sport.
“Growing up in a Caribbean-Latino family, there was a lot of white-washing. My hair was always ‘bad hair’, my skin was ‘too dark’ or my nose was ‘too wide’.
“I began to not enjoy my physicality so much because it wasn’t getting me girls, it wasn’t getting me friends and it wasn’t making me happy.
“Hearing that as a kid I began to not like the features of my body or myself.”
Growing up in Kendall, Florida, Caceres’ childhood changed when his father was handed a two-year prison sentence for selling drugs.
He was eight years old and his family home became an easy target.
Caceres, now 34, recalls his father’s rivals “robbing us blind”, which forced him and his family to move to a more affluent neighbourhood in the hope of finding a greater sense of security.