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Normally, I could hit hard enough, as anyone who studied my fights might have known. But the impression was that I was essentially defensive, the very reverse of a killer, the prize fighter who read books, even Shakespeare.

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

I was probably the best that ever walked this earth. And I could take a punch. I could deliver a punch. I didn't have the hardest punch in the world but my punches were sharp and they were crisp. And if you took too many of them, you would be knocked out.

The way I lived my life, I truly wasn't an active resistance fighter.

I thought I was a pretty good physical specimen. But there was a teenager from Brooklyn, who basically wiped the floor with me on the street. He gave me a punch that I didn't even feel. All I knew I was looking up at the sky. I tried to fight him, and I got a number of injuries after that.

I spent the whole first year of my career just on my legs. If you have good legs under you, then you can punch. Anybody can stand and throw their hands and look like an idiot. If you actually want to learn how to punch, you have to work on being balanced on your legs and feeling your legs under you. Feel the ground.

I always thought I was powerful, since I was a kid.

There's a lot more to me than just power.

I have always been a martial arts fighter; it goes to back when I was eighteen. I was competing on the circuit, but when you're performing, you tend to pull punches because you don't want to hurt anyone.