Stipe Miocic stands on the verge of UFC history this weekend.

Miocic will seek to join a very short list of three-time heavyweight champions when he battles Jon Jones in this Saturday’s UFC 309 main event from New York City’s Madison Square Garden in what will be his first bout since March 2021.

A fight of this magnitude brings with it an intense media spotlight, and it is this glare that Miocic told the media in the Big Apple on Wednesday he struggled with in the beginning stages of his career — but ahead of his bid to become the first fighter to hold a legitimate win over Jones on Saturday night, he says that such issues no longer bother him.

“I don’t really worry about that,” Miocic said to reporters, including The Mac Life. “That’s one thing I learned in this career. I stopped caring what people think. You have your opinion, you have your opinion, I’m not going to change it. I really don’t care.

“In the beginning of my career, I was a little sensitive about it,” he admitted. “Like you don’t know me, I don’t know you, so why are you saying sh*t about me? I would get terrible DMs and stuff like, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ You don’t know me.

“I literally just stopped caring because I realised they don’t know me, and I don’t know them. They’re just pissed off about something, and they’re trying to take it off on me. I couldn’t care less, honestly. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done in my life.”