You don't think. It's all instinct. If you stop to think, you're gone.
People say it's a movie about boxing, but. . . I don't agree at all. I don't think it's a movie about boxing. Boxing is like a platform. It's just a stage where this is played out.
One of my friends once saw another guy's (criminal) record and said, 'Look, this guy is a born troublemaker, just a loser. ' I had to tell him, 'No, that's my record - and it doesn't include my juvenile history. '
He didn't have no respect as a professional fighter should, no class. I was going to make him pay with his health for everything he said. . . I wanted to do it very slowly. I wanted him to remember this for a long time.
I liked trumpet because it's related to boxing, but also it has a capacity to create a different type of beauty. There are fight fans, people who want to see that, but what they're really there to see is pretty rough. They're there for blood, which is fine. It's part of it. I enjoyed having the same type of internal, mental, physical fight, but enduring that sort of trauma or pain to send a message of love. I can still have the fight, but what I'm fighting for is more a reality that I want to create.
This fight isn't about boxing, it's something deeper than that.
Any fighter didn't like Muhammad Ali should have his head examined.
I was backstage at the House of Blues in L. A where I was about to perform, and Stevie Wonder and Prince turned up at my dressing room together! Stevie started beat boxing and Prince started singing one of my songs, all of a sudden it was like I was in a cypher with these incredible artists.
Patience is a part of boxing. After I had missed out on the Olympic gold medal in 1984, a lot of people tried to talk me into turning professional quickly to make money. They told me that the next Olympics in Seoul would be boycotted again, that I was wasting my life, blah blah. But I still had unfinished business. I wanted the gold medal, and I got it in 88. Only then was I ready to turn professional.
Life is the best left hooker I ever saw, although some say it was Charlie White of Chicago
It ain't about if he knocks a guy out. It's about how he knocks a guy out. It's the style, the improvisation.
He has turned defensive boxing into a poetic art. Trouble is, nobody ever knocked anybody out with a poem.
I could have knocked him out in the 3rd round but I wanted to do it slowly, So he would remember this night for a long time.
Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost.
It's different when you become a professional, because you also have to become a businessman, and that takes something away from it.
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.
The greatest fighter I ever saw
I think its so good for boxing when a new guy or new blood as we call it, makes a big statement.
A lot of boxers' features change - mainly when I fight 'em
Boxing is the ultimate challenge. There's nothing that can compare to testing yourself the way you do every time you step in the ring.