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When you look at athletes, they have fundamentals.

I think of sports writers as mediating between two worlds. Athletes probably think of sports writers as not macho enough. And people in high culture probably think of sports writers as jocks or something. They are in an interestingly complex position in which they have to mediate the world of body and the world of words.

Amazingly, I think that a lot of times athletes are - are kind of in a position where other think they shouldn't weigh in on certain social topics.

I think it's very easy for people to stereotype athletes, good and bad.

I definitely feel like I'm more of an artist than an athlete. But I'm good at both.

Athletes these days are too robotic. People like to see performances filled with emotion. In my career I tried to be amusing, to differentiate myself from the other champions.

But I like to think an athlete is an athlete.

I think that's one thing about the entertainment industry: Athletes want to be actors, and musicians want to be actors, so it all kind of mixes nice together.

There are a lot of things that can be learned from the darker corners of athletics. You have doctors who view bodybuilders as cavalier amateurs of science. And then you have the bodybuilders who view the doctors as too conservative to do anything interesting. So I've tried to become the middleman for putting some of those pieces together.