With boxing, sometimes you’ll watch the first three rounds, then you’ll change the channel and turn it back in the 10th round. With MMA, you have to watch all 15 minutes. You’ll want to watch every second.
I just like boxing.
I’ve always said boxing will not retire me, I will retire from boxing, and I stand by that statement.
When I came back to Mumbai after boarding school, I was 16 and I picked up weight training and yoga. This is when I also started dance classes and Pilates and then I started doing different workouts every month. I am now proficient in kick boxing, gymnastics, classical dance as well as yoga.
It would clearly revolutionise boxing if we could have a tournament in every division.
My fighting style, if you will, is a combination of mimicking, cowboy films and boxing that I have done throughout my life.
English football gives other leagues an advantage. There are some traditions you can’t change, I realise that. Boxing Day is non-negotiable. But you can’t play nine games in December and nine in January. You have to stop at some point.
I never started in boxing to be a British champion or a world champion. There are loads of world champions in Britain, and if you mention them to someone out there on the street, nobody knows who they are.
I’m a big fan of the ‘Rocky’ series. Given the chance, I’d love to meet Sylvester Stallone. But apart from boxing, I’m an ardent fan of tennis and football.
A boxing workout is the heaviest thing, but it’s the best. The worst part is that boxing gyms are the smelliest things in the universe. You have to lie down on the floor, where everyone has been sweating and spitting, and do 1,000 situps and push-ups.
I’m the Godfather of Boxing. Everything is out in the open with me. What you see is what you get.
I don’t have the runs on the board to trash talk anyone in the boxing sense. I’ve got to do it the hard way and earn that respect.
The art of boxing is seeing spaces and being able to take shots. The hitting and being hit have to become one. Your reactions have to be so in the moment. There’s no time to think.
I’ve had boxing gloves on since before I could walk and been in gyms all of my life.
In boxing, as with other government-regulated activity, the integrity of public records should be preserved.
I think it’s fair to say I’ve always been a boxing fan.
I think that every boxer should understand he’s on the pedestal for a short span. It’s best that you use boxing and don’t let boxing use you. Use boxing to sell, because people are selling you through your boxing career, so you have to learn to sell yourself, and you’ll never starve.
Hagler was a puncher-slugger. He’d box sometimes, but boxing wasn’t his forte. His thing was relentless punishment and ‘beat you.’
Boxing is not always about standing in the middle going toe to toe. It’s about poise and grace under extreme pressure.
In boxing, there are lot of things that happen where they try to slow down the process and try to get to the other team, trying to get into our heads.
I didn’t like school at all. I was bullied and didn’t have a good time. Boxing was my escapism, and the ring was where I felt best.
I went into boxing, and I’m bisexual, and I still achieved and performed at the highest level, and I came away with gold and made history, so with that said, anything is possible.
Boxing was not something I truly enjoyed. Like a lot of things in life, when you put the gloves on, it’s better to give than to receive.
Every time you have a huge fight in wrestling, in boxing, in MMA, both guys are sure they’re going to win. They really believe it.
I can’t make it doing anything else, the amount of money. Obviously, anybody can go to work and make money, but the paycheck I make boxing, I’m not going to make anywhere else.
We have scaled the heights of Mount Everest, dominated the Southeast Asian games, we have won international beauty titles, and of course punched our way to triumph in the boxing world. Our people compete and win every day in every imaginable job throughout the world.
Muhammad Ali was a god, an idol and an icon. He was boxing. Any kid that had the opportunity to talk to Ali, to get advice from Muhammad Ali, was privileged. He’s always given me time to ask questions, although I was so in awe that I didn’t ask questions.
That’s the reality of boxing – it can be over in a flash.
If they let people go fight jiu-jitsu tournaments, they can’t stop me going to fight a boxing fight.
One thing that has irritated me in the sport of boxing since I stopped is I’m really surprised that no one has come along to excite me like me.
I love the whole world of boxing and the sense of community that exists there.
I somewhere along the way became fascinated with exploring characters who are willing to put themselves into violent situations, whether it’s football, hockey, boxing, being a cop, being a soldier. There’s not a lot of people who are willing to put themselves into those situations.
I think that every male actor fantasizes with a boxing film.
When I’m not boxing, I play instruments.
If I hadn’t gone towards boxing, I might have been one of those kids getting into trouble. A lot of my friends did. They were clever kids at school, but they just went down the wrong path.
I love to exercise. I’m a big hiker, and I like boxing. I mean, I love a good burger, but I keep things in moderation.
Boxing is what pays my bills.
Auditioning is like boxing: It keeps me hungry and intense, whether I get the part or not.
I love boxing. There’s something fierce about using your body’s force that way.
You have to be super focused when you’re boxing. After I’ve done a few rounds, I feel as if I can conquer the world.
Well I am grooming him, he has a boxing trainer that knows what he is talking about, and once he has that he is able to put everything together and he listens, and when somebody listens they are able to accomplish anything.
My dad just wanted me to find something to do to keep me out of trouble. Boxing was the great escape.
I like running, and I like boxing.
I have a boxing trainer at a gym, which is really fun. And I also try to complement it with flybarre, which is lengthening, strengthening, toning, just tightening everything up.
It’s a hard sport. You don’t come from a rich family wanting to be a boxer. Rich kids get hit in the face, they go home. Poor kids come back. They see boxing as a way out.
When you meet someone, ask about what hobby they have, not what they do. People always ask me about cooking, but I prefer to talk about tennis or boxing.
It’s not just a trainer – as a man, my dad was unbelievable. Even outside boxing, he was my friend as well. We were boxer and trainer in the gym, but as soon as that bell goes, we’d have a cup of tea, and we’d go on about normal life. We would just leave that bit behind. That’s how we kept going.
Everywhere I go, people ask me for photos and autographs, saying I inspired them to start training. Boris Johnson says his sons started boxing after seeing me – how cool is that?
When you start boxing when you’re 7 years old, that’s your dream, to become world champion, and after that you want to become something bigger than world champion.
My mum is the opposite of my dad. She’s a very private person, very shy and totally against boxing. She never watched any of my fights live. She hated me doing it.
I put myself in a position where I made wrestling an option for me. I don’t have to wrestle. I don’t have to take another shot for the rest of my life if I don’t want to. I have good enough hands, good enough boxing, good enough timing to strike with anybody in our division.
I am a boxing fan.
Since I was a boy of five or six, I had it in my mind I would be a world boxing champion.
I always tried to be different from everyone else. Then I found out about boxing. That was the way I could be different from everyone else. I always went against the crowd.
Boxing is really an art form. It might just look like two people beating each other up, but when you look closer, it’s actually quite beautiful and interesting.
There is so much to learn from boxing, you can never have learnt everything; anybody who says they know it all is lying. You can’t – there is always something new to learn.
Boxing gave me a path in life. Because of boxing, I learned what I’m capable of achieving if I put my mind to it and how hard work can and will pay off in the end. It gave me confidence and taught me to face fear straight on and dig down deep when times get tough.
Music is a great part of my life. It helps me relax and keep calm whenever I am not boxing.
That’s the biggest problem with boxing in the United States. They do not promote it like they used to, when it used to be Howard Cosell and they showed it on ‘Wide World of Sports.’ Everybody knew all the fighters. Everybody was looking forward to the year when the Olympics came on.
Boxing is all about timing. And if you take long periods of inactivity, you will be made to pay the price.
It’s a big move from the ‘Tough Man’ circuit to professional boxing. When I turned pro, I had to play catch-up and was fighting almost twice a month until I had more than 20 fights under my belt.
