There are so many things I’ve done that the world of boxing has witnessed. It’s going to be difficult for the boxing people to pick one of my performances as the best.
The Pavlik fight was the first time I heard the masses put the word knockout attached to my opponent. I’m real keen on what people say. Ninety percent of it might be garbage, but something in there might be the plan. That woke me up and I knew I wanted to destroy.
I am going in there to win this fight. I don’t think people are taking me seriously. I’m gonna surprise a lot of people. This guy helped two people make history.
When you have somebody that’s smart and you’re not so smart, to me that’s modern day slavery because you’re being dictated to.
Early on in my career I had the kind of anxious where you couldn’t sleep at night. That anxiousness is like a virus we all have in us. Some you can deal with but some will wipe you out.
It takes a very very strong individual not to be corrupt in any of those things as time moves on. Myself and other people who went that road and experienced that world, some got a second birth of life and some is in the dirt.
Smokey Wilson was like my Gandhi. If I had run into somebody else in prison, with a different set of values, the world might have never known one of the greatest boxing talents ever to come out of Philadelphia.
I must destroy everybody that comes in front of me. I must execute them and I must do it in grand style. I must slay Robert Allen like I must slay De La Hoya or anybody else that steps in that ring.
I function better when my back is to the wall.
There’s no great person that lived that didn’t go through scrutiny or ridicule and prosecution in all types of ways, to be who they are in history.
If I’m in a situation where Duane Ford is one of the judges, I have to pick it up.
I like Sergio Martinez. I think he’s strong, he’s gritty, he’s got plenty of heart, he’s not the fanciest guy you might have seen in boxing but he has the goods to be around a long time in the Middleweight division.
I have the philosophy that I’m different. I have the body, the well-being and the experience. Now the teacher gets to show the student that he’s worthy of the lesson. Let me show him through experience.
The media here know that there’s the possibility that I can pull this off. I’m confident. Confidence comes with work. When you prepare yourself and you know you’re going into combat with all of your bullets, you have the confidence to go into battle.
I wouldn’t wanna fight me, because I know it wouldn’t be a good outcome for both.
The controversy was that Chad Dawson thought he was in an MMA fight and not a boxing match.
You’re hated by some, loved by others, but that’s what’s great about being different. If everybody loved you, that means you’re not doing the right thing most of the time.
I was made to be where I’m at. I just had to go through some challenges, so that I can educate others later.
I was told I would be back in 90 days. If I listened to people, I would be back where I came from – the penitentiary.
This fight isn’t about boxing, it’s something deeper than that.