Boxing is about being hit rather more than it is about hitting, just as it is about feeling pain, if not devastating psychological paralysis, more than it is about winning.
If I hadn't had the talent, the networks wouldn't have televised my fights. No one has made me; I made myself. I paid my dues
Before the start of the '76 Olympics, I'd had 160 amateur fights. I won 155 and lost five
Every fighter should really do that if they can, because if you build a fan base at home first, then once they receive you at home, it'll be easier to be received elsewhere.
If there is one abiding theme in the gym, it's the withering work in the ring. Those not fit do not survive.
I've seen George Foreman shadow boxing and the shadow won.
Some pay to see me win, some pay to see me lose, but they all pay.
I know where I'm going and I know the truth, and I don't have to be what you want me to be. I'm free to be what I want.
An incident that left an impression on me was the 1999 sub-junior national boxing championship held in Calcutta. I had trained extremely hard to get there but got kicked out in the first round itself. 'If others can win, why can't you?' I repeatedly asked myself.
As a West Side kid fooling around with boxing gloves, I had been, for some reason of temperament, more interested in dodging a blow than in striking one.
Champions aren't made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them-a desire, a dream, a vision.
I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.
Yeah, I'm scared. I'm scared I might kill Schmeling.
Earnie Shavers could punch you in the neck and break your ankle.
In no other sport is the connection between performer and observer so intimate, so frequently painful, so unresolved
Of course that is not the whole story, but that is the way with stories; we make them what we will. It's a way of explaining the universe while leaving the universe unexplained, it's a way of keeping it all alive, not boxing it into time.
People don't realise what they had till it's gone. Like President Kennedy - nobody like him. Like The Beatles, there will never be anything like them. Like my man, Elvis Presley - I was the Elvis of boxing.
This boxer is doing what is expected of him, bleeding from his nose.
He went to the hospital with bleeding kidney and me,I went dancing with my life
If my fans think I can do everything I say I can do, then they're crazier than I am. After one of his fight predictions turned out to be wrong.
The boxing game has been good, so we need to give back. We have to teach young men how to be men.
A champion shows who he is by what he does when he's tested. When a person gets up and says 'I can still do it', he's a champion. If they cut my bald head open, they will find one big boxing glove. That's all I am. I live it.
Boxing is like jazz. The better it is, the less people appreciate it.
You have to believe in yourself when no one else does.
If you screw things up in tennis, it's 15-love. If you screw up in boxing, it's your ass.
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