Kate Upton On Dating Justin Verlander: ‘He Constantly Kicked My A**’

Kate Upton has often admitted to being a pretty competitive person, so it makes sense that she’s dating a professional athlete in Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers. But when it comes to competition within the relationship, who comes out on top?

Kate revealed that it’s Justin, not herself that usually takes the top prize, claiming in the upcoming issue of Marie Claire, that Verlander’s got the magic touch.

“I was so competitive with him, and he constantly kicked my a**. He’ll beat me at Spades. He’s better at trapeze,” Upton said. The Sports Illustrated model did manage to name one sport she can best Verlander at. “Oh! I beat him in foosball!” Upton declared.

Other nuggets Kate dished on included her parents reaction to being named People’s “Sexiest Woman Alive.”

“My parents were pretty funny about it. They told me, ‘We went out to dinner and dressed a little nicer because our daughter is the Sexiest Woman Alive.'”

She also expressed her frustration over haters who doubt her. In fact, she was adamant that she uses their hate as direct motivation for her success.

“Anytime there’s doubt or someone says I can’t do something. I always accomplish it. Haters and doubters are very, very good motivation.”

Upton echoed a similar statement in an interview with Net-A-Porter magazine earlier this year. She made it clear that her ambition is what drives her to be successful. “If I make up my mind that I’m going to accomplish something, it’s like I have tunnel vision,” she says. “I block out everything else and that’s all I see.”

It was this ambition that led Kate to overcome being pigeonholed earlier in her career. “I was always trying to explain that I could do more… It took a long time,” she said. Upton continued, detailing the hard work she put into rising up the supermodel food chain.

“I had to educate myself. I knew nothing about fashion. I knew about rainbow flip-flops, and that’s about it! So I’d look everyone up, see which other people they’d shot and what their style was, to be as prepared as possible.”

Overall, the competitive nature of Kate Upton is what helped her succeed. In addition to being the face of Guess and Express, Upton helped mobile developers for Game of War increase their profits by appearing in a highly touted media campaign.

“People always have low expectations of me,” Kate acknowledges, “but that makes it easy to impress them!”

[Kate Upton, Justin Verlander Photo Credit: Dimitrios Kambouris / Staff]