Quote

Joe Frazier got hit more than me - and he doesn't have Parkinson's.

Parkinson's is very hard to diagnose. So when I finally went to a neurologist, and he said, 'Oh, you have Parkinson's disease,' I was completely shocked.

He had Parkinson's disease for about, I'd say diagnosed for about 11 of the last years of his life. And treatment was not as good as it is now, of course. We're still going along and he died in '85 and he was 77.

Boxing is about being hit rather more than it is about hitting, just as it is about feeling pain, if not devastating psychological paralysis, more than it is about winning.

Boxing was not the sport that I thought is was due to all the politics.

Boxing is a dying sport, really. Years ago, the world heavyweight champion could be said to have reached the highest pinnacle of sport. Even in this country, boxers were heroes. Think of Henry Cooper and Frank Bruno.

All of the sports have a safety net, but boxing is the only sport that has none. So when the fighter is through, he is through. While he was fighting his management was very excited for him, but now that he is done, that management team is moving on.

Boxing's not a career for anyone: it doesn't last long enough to be a career.

Some have made boxing a terrible thing to be around.

In the United States in the 20th century, every major event that America was going through, there was a boxer who seemed to symbolically represent it, from slavery to the Vietnam War to the Depression - all the way along, you just seemed to have boxers that carried the narrative.