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It's less about the physical training, in the end, than it is about the mental preparation: boxing is a chess game. You have to be skilled enough and have trained hard enough to know how many different ways you can counterattack in any situation, at any moment.

I fought tall fighters, short fighters, strong fighters, slow fighters, sluggers and boxers. It was either learn or get knocked off.

Training for a fight is never easy, regardless of the opponent.

In my research, I learned that the Boxers' kung fu wasn't all that formalized. The vast majority of them didn't belong to some age-old martial arts tradition. They were basically poor, starving teenagers doing the best they could to figure out how to fight, relying more on their mystical beliefs than formal training.

As soon as I get time, I want to start to do some fight training. I tried a little boxing once with my personal trainer back in L.A. - it's such a good workout, and it's a good skill to have, especially in my industry, since sometimes you have to do stunts and fight scenes.

I had to get up run in the morning for 2 hours, go to the gym and also get good opponents as sparring partners because I'm a big believer in that how you train is how you will fight at least when it came to me that's how it worked.

I grew up in a gym in Miami, the one where Muhammad Ali trained. I had 142 amateur fights and lost three.

My martial arts came a lot from my uncle, who actually taught martial arts through the military. He was a black belt in tae kwon do, but also, he used a lot of military-style fighting where it's not the high kicks or anything like that. It's basically defeat your opponent as fast as possible.

Training's training; boxing's boxing. Everyone does the same kind of stuff: they spar, they train, they do whatever they do to prepare for fights.

Fighters today are much bigger, stronger and quicker and not only that but referees, judges and doctors back then were very strict and if your head got busted up the fight would be stopped.