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Boxing is all about how cool and controlled and clear your mind is. Violence only gets in the way of you winning a fight. It's a sport that's more about the strategy than anything. You lose or you win in your head.

Boxing is like chess. You encourage your opponent to make mistakes so you can capitalise on it. People think you get in the ring and see the red mist, but it's not about aggression. Avoiding getting knocked out is tactical.

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.

It takes a certain type of man to become a boxer, to fight for a living. To be able to have the confidence to hit another man, to control your fears. You must overcome the psychical aspect and believe in the art, the discipline of the sport. You need to study. You need to be smart.

Boxing is not about your feelings. It's about performance.

Boxing is a formal, ritualized creation of crisis.

As a boxer, you have to put risk in to get to another level.

I land a higher percentage of punches than any boxer in boxing.

In boxing, you get hit, it's painful, then you sit on the stool when the adrenaline is gone and you feel that pain. And then you fight the next round.

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.