A guy like Manny Pacquiao or Floyd Mayweather is used to fighting 12-rounders. Put them into the ring for three rounds against a top amateur boxer at a much faster pace, and they’ll lose a fight, and how bad is that going to make them look?
I always watched professional football and my father played at an amateur level, but I didn’t think I wanted to become a pro.
Mark Haddon’s ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ was published while I was trying to work out how to write ‘Elizabeth Is Missing,’ and reading the story of that impaired amateur detective gave me the licence I needed to attempt one of my own.
Two weeks ago at the U.S. Amateur, my mom caddied, and that is kind of a different feeling, because she’s your mom and you have to listen to her. It was really comfortable having my mom there, but it’s also really relieving and comfortable to have someone that knows the course off their hat, really.
One of the things that made me love wrestling in general was my career in amateur wrestling in high school and college. Just being on the mat made me feel a type of aggression I wasn’t really able to produce in my regular life.
I had to leave school at 14 because my father got injured in the mines and I had to support my family. I was an undertaker’s assistant, then a plasterer, before doing my military service in the RAF. All the while, I was doing amateur dramatics and dreaming of getting a scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
I read a lot of ‘Nancy Drew’ books as a kid and considered myself a bit of an amateur detective.
Putting is so difficult, so universally vexing, that the best the pros can do is tell us how to miss. ‘Miss it on the pro side,’ they say, meaning miss it above the hole. I can’t even do that consistently. I miss it on the pro side. I miss it on the amateur side. I miss it on both sides of the clown’s mouth.
I can fairly be called an amateur because I do what I do, in the original sense of the word – for love, because I love it. On the other hand, I think that those of us who make our living writing history can also be called true professionals.
There is no line of demarcation between the amateurs and the pros; everyone is using the same tactics and playing in the same arenas. The only thing that separates them is radio, but the artist doesn’t control who goes to radio and who doesn’t.
Every week, as an 11-year-old kid, I would tune in to what was really the first American Idol-type program, a radio show called ‘Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour.’ The winning group on the evening of September 8, 1935, was called the Hoboken Four, and their spokesman was Frank Sinatra, then aged 19.
In skating or any amateur sport, as athletes we share something in common: the cost of training is quite a burden on our parents or on the athletes themselves trying to find a way to pay for their costs.
Amateur bureaucrats are often even worse than professional bureaucrats.
One of the cool things about amateur athletics is that, I think, the pursuit is sort of the pursuit of excellence for nothing more than trying to be excellent.
While growing up, my dream and my goal was to win an Olympic gold medal. I did that, and both times, they were the proudest moments in my amateur career.
My father was an amateur filmmaker who shot 8mm color documentaries.
My mum and dad’s hobby was amateur dramatics.
I lost as amateur, I lost a bunch of times as a wrestler, and you always come back.
Artistic self-indulgence is the mark of an amateur. The temptation to make scenes, to appear late, to call in sick, not to meet deadlines, not to be organized, is at heart a sign of your own insecurity and at worst the sign of an amateur.
I am essentially an amateur medecin, and this to me is almost a mania.
The AAC is the best amateur event in the region and the most important tournament to me every year.
Before I ever acted as an amateur – which I did a great deal at school and at university – I used to go to the theater with my parents in the north of England, where I was born and brought up… Theater of all sorts.
I left home when I was 13. When I was 15, I was living in a youth hostel, and I was the 167-pound amateur wrestling champion.
I started acting as an amateur when I was a kid, but I wanted to become a diplomat. It was self-centered and weird, but I had this idea of going out in the world and solving conflicts and making the world a better place. But I kept on acting, and eventually, I just dropped out of school and continued acting.
I won an MVP trophy with the St. Louis Amateur Baseball Association. I didn’t even start. I was a sub on this team. This was, like, an All-Star game where we had athletes from different teams, different mixtures. We had, like, the only black team in the league, basically. We had four players go to the All-Star game.
So I have the classic amateur’s technique; I know some very tricky bits and I have large gaping holes.
That’s what amateur skating is about, technical expertise, and it should always stay that way.
I’ve won junior titles, ABA titles and boxed for England all over the world against future Olympic champions as an amateur – and then beat world-class fighters as a professional.
I’d get beat up a lot early on. I wasn’t the strongest, fastest or most skilled guy there, but I had a lot of heart and kept showing up. I just started getting better and by the time I was 13 I was knocking older kids and amateurs out.
The Amateur Marriage grew out of the reflection that of all the opportunities to show differences in character, surely an unhappy marriage must be the richest.
I think that’s my strength, that I am an amateur gardener who loves gardening. I’ve read about it, I’ve written about it, I’ve done it all my life but at heart, I’m just a passionate amateur gardener.
I used to spend a lot of time at football training, but that time was later spent in amateur acting classes and my local youth theatre, in plays at school and after-school clubs. That filled the void.
I always thought of myself as an amateur stunt man.
I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading. So I made an economic decision, and it turned out the best judgment I ever made in my life.
All fraudulent elections should be condemned, including those in Turkey and Russia. And we need to be doubly mindful not to indulge amateur socialists in this country, because even though a Bernie Sanders presidency is a joke, the consequences of diet communism are deadly serious.
It took me a few years to explain to my colleagues and my mentors and the people that I looked up to and I wrestled that I’m not in wrestling anymore. I’m in sports entertainment. Pro’ wrestling doesn’t mean that we’re saying we’re a step up above amateur wrestling, because there’s nothing above Olympic wrestling.
I’ve been an amateur photographer since my teens.
I’ve never looked at my Facebook page or my website, because I’m fundamentally an amateur.
I can go any style – hook up, lock up, take you down – and do all kinds of amateur moves.
It is a difficult decision, either to turn pro or stay amateur.
I was trying to find an original style that didn’t sound like Tony Bennett or anyone else. So I prayed about it, woke up with this high voice, and by 1954, I was going to amateur nights and winning.
Fighting behind closed doors is like going back to be an amateur, or your early days as a professional. Up and coming fighters can do it but for your bigger guys like Anthony Joshua, Tyson Fury and me, I don’t think we can do that.
In Holland you go into amateur teams, come up through the ranks and are generally spotted for senior or professional football. At 16, I had made it into a men’s amateur team, and was picked up professionally from there.
When I was six, I joined an amateur club called VK Tielrode in Belgium where I lived.
Most of the time I got knockouts in my amateur fights.
I’ve got a soft spot for Theatr Colwyn because my granddad used to run the Colwyn amateur dramatic society in the 1930s.
It’s ridiculous having the pros in an amateur sport, but at the same time, there’s a lot of pros who are going to struggle over three rounds.
I do like books on anatomy. I have to say I’m an amateur physician, I guess.
I always said as an amateur that I’d want to one day fight and beat Kindelan because he was the best out there.
It came like a natural thing for me, and I liked it. That’s how my amateur career started. But again, no interest in a future in boxing. I just thought it was like a little pastime, something to do.
My family was going back to England to visit my mother’s grandmother, who was very ill. We went up to Liverpool and I met my great-aunt, who was just a force of nature. She was an elocution teacher and a huge enthusiast for theater and the classics. I took her amateur acting class, and she was really impressed with me.
I’m aware that there are a lot of guys playing at amateur level with a build like mine and I say stick at it, use what you’ve got to make an impact on the game.
The Australian film industry has recognised Tropfest as a place to nurture young talent. It’s a stepping stone between amateur and professional.
The prize money for first place was $2,800, but I didn’t take it because I was still an amateur.
