When you get punched, you have to get up. You have no other choice. If you don't, you're not going to grow, you're not going to get better as a player.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When you're in a fight, and you get hit, it hurts. And as you get older, you begin to take on the aches and the bruises of doing that.
If you fight back and get hit, it hurts a little while; if you don't fight back it hurts forever.
I started boxing at 12, and I was above weight for my age, so they put me in the ring with adults... When you're fighting all the time, it gives you the ability to fight without getting angry.
Usually in fist fights you get punched in the face.
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.
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.
The first thing I learned in boxing is to not get hit. That's the art of boxing. Execute your opponent without getting hit. In sports school, we were putting our hands behind our backs and having to defend ourselves with our shoulders, by rolling, by moving round the ring, moving out feet.
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.
Fighting is kind of like choreography. It's not just get in there and punching someone: you have to have choreography. Someone is going to hit high; someone is going to hit at the bottom.
To be knocked out doesn't mean what it seems. A boxer does not have to get up.