Quote

I've been a boxing fan ever since I was a kid.

There's such a big buzz around boxing at the moment. Everything's happening and there's so much building up with a lot of young talent coming through.

There's so much pressure on becoming the next Muhammad Ali or Mike Tyson, and if you don't achieve that in boxing, you're nothing.

Boxing was just another one to keep me going as a child.

Putting prize-fighting altogether aside as one of the unavoidable evils attending on this manly exercise, the inestimable value of boxing as a training, discipline, and development of boys and young men remains.

It's not just the physical aspect of boxing, it's the whole fighter mentality that has been ingrained in me through the years as a competitive athlete. One of the hardest things you'll ever do is to box - to get into the ring and to face off with somebody whose whole goal is to knock you out, to hurt you, and to be able to fight back.

I started a youth center in Houston. The kids would come in and want to learn to box; they wanted to tear up the world, beat up the world. And I'd try to show them they didn't need anger. They didn't need all that killing instinct they'd read about. You can be a human being and pursue boxing as a sport.

I started boxing at 12, and I was above weight for my age, so they put me in the ring with adults... When you're fighting all the time, it gives you the ability to fight without getting angry.

I think that every boxer should understand he's on the pedestal for a short span. It's best that you use boxing and don't let boxing use you. Use boxing to sell, because people are selling you through your boxing career, so you have to learn to sell yourself, and you'll never starve.