The sport needs a personality, not a fighter. We've got plenty of great fighters in the sport, but no personalities. No one is standing for anything. The last personality we had was Mike Tyson. He stood for something. It wasn't much, but he stood for something.
The referee is going to be the most important person in the ring tonight besides the fighters.
Boxing is like jazz. The better it is, the less people appreciate it.
The Internal Revenue Service is the real undefeated heavyweight champion.
Sure the fight was fixed. I fixed it with a right hand.
I love the UFC. I love it. If they had had that back when I was coming up, in 1966, it would have been my sport. Man, I love it. And you know what? Nobody would have pulled the rope-a-dope on me.
The question isn't at what age I want to retire, it's at what income.
I started a youth center in Houston. The kids would come in and want to learn to box; they wanted to tear up the world, beat up the world. And I'd try to show them they didn't need anger. They didn't need all that killing instinct they'd read about. You can be a human being and pursue boxing as a sport.
I'd have to say losing the title to Ali in '74 was the lowest moment in sports for me. It was the most devastating thing in my boxing career, and it still hurts to this day.
Sports are sports. Its all about how we carry ourselves out of the ring.
The integration of a headgear in professional boxing would do so much to make it safer for young men. They could go into the sport, make a lot of money and then come out and be good grandfathers.
The Rope a Dope would not have existed without the Big Dope.
Boxing is the sport to which all other sports aspire.
There's more to boxing than hitting. There's not getting hit, for instance.