I don’t want anyone to have to interview me. I wish I didn’t have to talk too much about myself.
I felt the same fear in my first fight as I did in my last fight. It never goes away.
I didn’t come from a household where my mother dragged me outside and said, “You’d better fight.” My mother wouldn’t let me fight. I was not an aggressive kid.
It’s unnatural to fight somebody who has nothing against you and never did anything to you or to your family, who never stole anything from you. And now you’ve got to go and try to dismantle this guy.
You think you know the difference between a hero and a coward, Mike? Well, there is no difference between a hero and a coward in what they feel. It’s what they do that makes them different. The hero and the coward feel exactly the same but you have to have the discipline to do what a hero does and to keep yourself from doing what the coward does.
The ability to apply the discipline, the ability to do what needs to be done no matter how he feels inside, in my opinion, is the definition of a true professional.
Your mind is not your friend, Mike. I hope you know that. You have to fight with your mind, control it, put it in its place. You have to control your emotions. Fatigue in the ring is ninety percent psychological. It’s just the excuse of a man who wants to quit.
The boxing’s the easy part. When you get into the ring to fight, that’s the vacation. But when you get in the gym, you have to do things over and over till you’re sore and deep in your mind you say, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore,’ I push that out of my mind.
Fear is your best friend or your worst enemy. It’s like fire. If you can control it, it can cook for you; it can heat your house. If you can’t control it, it will burn everything around you and destroy you.
One day Cus came to me. “You know, Camille really wants you to do your chores. I could care less if you did, but you should do them because it will make you a better boxer.” “How’s taking out the trash going to make me a better boxer?” I scoffed. “Because doing something you hate to do like you love it is good conditioning for someone aspiring towards greatness.
He was very vindictive and always out for revenge. He couldn’t live without enemies, so he created them.
Confidence was everything. But in order to possess that confidence, you had to test yourself and put yourself on the line. It doesn’t come from osmosis, out of the air. It comes from consistently going over the visualization in your mind to help you develop the confidence that you want to possess.
The ones who lost and quit, well their demons will follow them to their grave because they had a chance to face them and they didn’t. You have to face your demons, Mike, or they will follow you to eternity.
I was a titan, the reincarnation of Alexander the Great. My style was impetuous, my defenses were impregnable, and I was ferocious.
Cus talked with such enthusiasm because enthusiasm is contagious and people will do things when they get enthused.
What if I failed and lost? I had been in a million fights on the streets.
Freedom is a very dangerous thing. We ration it very closely.
Social media made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.
I had been reading Nietzsche and thought I was a Superman. I could barely spell my name but I was a Superman.
You can’t give kids a fighting chance if you don’t give them a fighting mind.