I'd rather be an adviser. I don't wanna become a trainer because I think with the knowledge and the business sense that I've accomplished through my career and have credibility, why would I reduce myself down to being in a gym with a bunch of training which is not a bad thing to give advice, but I can do that with a suit and tie on and also be there when the cheques are written. I don't wanna be there when the cheques are handed down from 3 or 4 people's hands and then it hits mine as a trainer because 9/10 times, deductions have come out of that.
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 still shop at Costco. I just started tipping two years ago.
I've got a history of frustrating guys and making them angry.
I don't know what being a 48-year-old feels like. There are a lot of 48 year olds that aren't in good shape. The pharmacy is making a killing off of them.
I've done so many unpredictable things and so profoundly. Even the people who want to go against me, are afraid to go against me. They've been wrong so many times. A lot of them are just being mum right now. They must feel I can still do things.
I was made to be where I'm at. I just had to go through some challenges, so that I can educate others later.
Tavoris Cloud might actually be hungrier than me. How often do you hear a fighter say that his opponent is hungrier than he is? I don't need hunger. I'm motivated by my desire to prove that I'm different and that I can still silence the critics.
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.
Understand that I'm at my best when it comes to proving a point, not only to show that I'm a better fighter and a better athlete at 40½ years old, but I'm at my best when I know I've got to beat the system again.
This is a great position to be in. I don't really believe there is any fighter, in any decade that can be in my position of luxury that I've been in for many years.
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.
Did you hear what this idiot just said!? He said it's not about the W...It's everything about the W with me!
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.
I didn't need to take any fight for the last 10 years. But I've always fought the best and I've always wanted to prove myself to the best.
Boxers are resilitant guys. We know how to take of a big punch that hits us, we know how to survive. Oscar is a survivor, he's gonna be back bigger and stronger.
You think it's hard for me when I go in the ring and fight? That's the least of my problems. I think about the five years that I did in prison. I think about the nine years on parole. Nothing - nothing! - can compare to that struggle. I'm telling you, from being an ex-convict with 30 convictions, a degree nowhere to be found and black? I'm done.
I wouldn't wanna fight me, because I know it wouldn't be a good outcome for both.
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.
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.
If I'm in a situation where Duane Ford is one of the judges, I have to pick it up.
I was knocking guys out in the streets before I knew how to throw a jab and keep your chin down, In most neighbourhoods, the guy that could fight gets respect. You got in the parties free. I never had to pay the dollar because people were scared of me. But back then I was ignorant.
The controversy was that Chad Dawson thought he was in an MMA fight and not a boxing match.
You're not going to see a new Bernard Hopkins. I'm too old for that crap. I think what you will see is something different that I know I am capable of doing.
The powers that be don’t want athletes or boxers to become as smart as they are.
