There is a world of difference between being a reality TV star and a world champion boxer.
Someone like Jessica Ennis-Hill having her first baby then bouncing back to become world champion in the space of the year. I maybe wouldn’t have appreciated just how big an achievement that was until I had my own child. It’s an incredible thing.
Basically my whole life revolves around soccer. I don’t take many vacations. Everything just gets put on the back burner because of my training. I miss out on a lot of weddings and family functions. But at the end of the day, I’m sitting here as a world champion, and it feels pretty good.
You get these young kids who are training their whole life to go to the Olympics. To go there and not fight someone else like them but fight someone who has might won an Olympics before, been a world champion, and is just coming back to fight some kids, I think is insane.
My parents can’t always travel with me because my little brother is a world champion on dirt bikes.
We would have teams in Europe, Asia, Australia, South America and the Middle East. That would allow us to one day crown a true world champion. Clearly we have great ambitions but we also have a wonderful product.
I got to world champion, No 1-rated fighter in the division and managed to earn from the defences.
At 19, I was European champion, and at 21, I was world champion. Let’s just hope Amir Khan can follow in the same footsteps. I believe he can do it 100%; he’s a fantastic talent.
It’s a huge deal to have the chance to be a four-division world champion at 26 years old.
Carlos Molina is a great fighter. He’s a world champion. I give him all the credit for even just choosing me to fight him and giving me the opportunity. I’m going to be well-prepared, well-disciplined in the ring when it’s time to go.
I think a lot of people clamored for me to be a world champion or to be in this position but that I needed to be more serious and fit a certain mold. One of my things as a performer is that what I learned in our journey was, honestly, it was so much more rewarding to do it our way.
I want to be the European, Olympic, Commonwealth and world champion. I want the full set.
I was born in 1970. In 2002, I became a world champion. I was captain. I had the honor of receiving the World Cup Trophy from no less than whom? Pele! Man! If I say any more I’ll cry. It’s really emotional!
I would like to be the youngest UFC world champion. I believe I can accomplish that.
I’m not here to be mediocre. I’m not in the UFC just to get a paycheck and make a living. That’s really not what I’m here for. If I wanted to make money, I would have gotten out of the sport and done something else. I want to be a world champion.
I feel like everybody’s who fighting, young fighters and still learning and growing, that should be their goal – to be the UFC world champion.
You don’t become a world champion by training like a world champion – after you win a belt. If you want to become a world champion, long before that you’ve got to walk like one, talk like one, train like one, carry yourself like one. And that means training as hard as you can for every fight.
Whatever luck I had, I made. I was never a natural athlete, but I paid my dues in sweat and concentration and took the time necessary to learn karate and become world champion.
I was world champion. For me, chess is my life. It is everything.
I believe I’m destined to be a world champion and I’m getting closer to what I want. Part of it is developing a championship mentality and I feel I have that now.
To not only be a cancer survivor, but to return to the sport of boxing, because, I mean, this is not basketball, this is not baseball, this is not a sport you play. This is a sport where you can die in the ring. So it says a lot to me to come back and be a world champion in that aspect.
It is true – maybe with five or seven points more, I could be five times world champion. But on the other hand, I could have zero world championships, and zero wins or zero podiums, because F1 is an extremely competitive environment. So I just take the positives, and I am happy with my achievements.
You decide whether you want to box on, or not. And for me of course, I wasn’t going to be leaving the business until becoming a world champion, and defending it numerous times.
Obviously, if you’re able to become a two division world champion – not many are world champions in their life or their career. I have the opportunity to do this.
When I see Big E, I clearly see someone who could be world champion. The guy is on another level.
I played against men most of my life because our goal was that I wanted to reach the highest potential to be an absolute world champion.
Being a world champion was great, don’t get me wrong, but it also caused me a lot of problems.
When I become world champion, what do I need? I need opponents, I need someone to pick a venue, negotiate a date, and I need a promoter.
People never believe it when they find out I’m a karate world champion. They don’t see me as the type because I’m small and blonde.
I’ve had ups and downs in my career, and if you look at it as a bookmaker, the odds of me becoming a world champion were never in my favour, but I never stopped believing in myself and never stopped trying.
My biggest moment was winning the World Series because everyone in my town was able to feel he was a world champion.
After having been at WWE and being somebody who was being groomed to be a world champion, I ran afoul of some politics and spent three months on a losing streak. I had a confrontation with one of the executives.
All my life I’ve always wanted to be a world champion.
I believe I’ve shown my worth, become a world champion, now I want to try and see how good I am. The only way I’ll find that out is by testing myself against the best.
I trained and trained and went up against Kurt, then being a world champion in ’94, and after that I did Tommy’s tour and then my tour and all this stuff and just trying to deal with it all. And now, I’ve just kind of backed off a little.
I was the youngest world champion in history when I won the WSOP in 1989 at age 24.
Building a better life for every child is a lot harder than becoming a world champion. Both goals take dedication and commitment.
My goals in the future is to not just be in Formula 1. I want to be really successful, World Champion, though I guess this is like everyone! But that is what I’m targeting.
Going from a two-year-old Polish boy, who practically came to Germany with nothing more than a football under his arm, to a world champion – it’s more than I could have ever imagined.
I love being world champion.
Even though I say to myself that I was seven-times World Champion, the voice in my head says, ‘You can’t play this shot.’ It’s completely mental – quite literally. My confidence is sapped every time this happens.
So much of boxing is to do with your mental state. Evander Holyfield talks about spirit. I definitely have that spirit and feel like I’ve got something special inside me. It’s about me bringing it out, controlling it and using it to become world champion.
I’m going to be world champion and have a belt, and people will correctly be able to say I was the best instead of I was very good.
It was very hard when the newspapers were chasing me. It was also very weird. I know I’d just become world champion but shouldn’t they be following someone who has done something wrong?
I’m not going to say I was Britain’s greatest ever world champion. I think Joe Calzaghe was the best – although I think I fought a lot better fighters.
Ronaldinho is a phenomenon, and so is Cafu! I am twice World champion and led Brazil to a World Cup triumph in 2002.
Crossing the line and being world champion, I’ve always dreamt about it, and now I’ve done it. It’s quite a surreal feeling, but obviously very special.
I wanted to set new goals, because if you say, ‘Oh, I’m world champion,’ you don’t grow, and you don’t keep your level.
My money thing, I never wanted to have my motivation to be money, that’s not why I got into this sport, I got into it to be a world champion.
Obviously, every fighter wants to be the world champion, and that’s what I want to achieve.
I’ve been training super hard at the Lopez Taekwondo Academy in Houston, which belongs to my brother Jean. For me, I think confidence is the biggest thing; it’s all mental. I train with the best of the best, including my brother Steven, a five-time world champion who won Olympic gold medals.
When I was 30 I became world champion and that’s when I started to make a living.
You don’t forget who the real Iron Sheik is. Who the real world champion, hall of fame Jesus of the twitter is. Only one Iron Sheik.
I told my mother I was going to become a world champion and buy her a home.
People view you differently when you’re a world champion.
For me, back in Sydney, it was just being there and going out and beating Alexander Karelin, 13-time world champion and Olympic gold medalist. It was everything for me.
I know who I am. I’m a former world champion.
I started wrestling when I was 15 years old, and back when I was world champion, I was wrestling 7 nights a week.
I want people to look at me as a four-time world champion, in two weight categories, as a down-to-earth man of the people, not the joke that I had become.
