Alton Merkerson Quotations

The fact of the matter is, that when you get to the status that Roy is in, and you are considered to be the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world and you've won the heavyweight title -- you've reached the ultimate goal, so what else do you do?

There comes a time when action speaks louder than words. Constantly telling people what you're going to do like Tarver's doing and trying to explain why you didn't do what you were supposed to do the last time, that's not a positive thing. If I'm going to shoot you, I'm not going to tell you. I'm just going to shoot you. That's the frame of mind Roy's in right now.

As strange as it sounds, Roy wasn't motivated for those two fights. Roy is either self-motivated or he's not motivated at all. For those fights, he was bored. He was tired of pleasing other people. The second Tarver fight; he figured he'd beaten Tarver the first time when he was weak and had trouble making weight so now it would be easy. I didn't get what I should have gotten out of him in camp. And with Glen Johnson, it was the same thing. You can't make a fighter train if he doesn't want to. He might come to the gym but he won't work right while he's there.

Roy had gotten bored with boxing. He wasn't motivated for the first fight with Tarver, the second fight with Tarver or the fight with Johnson. He was tired of the whole boxing scene, because nothing he accomplished seemed to be good enough.

Once you've been known for being a great fighter, that's something that you can't take away. Personally, I don't think Roy has anything that he needs to prove to anybody because he had already proved that before by winning the middleweight, super-middleweight, light heavyweight and heavyweight titles and that can never be taken away. I don't think he is interested in proving anything to society or the boxing world - I think he is concerned with proving something to himself and doing the right thing.

If Roy wants his father back, that's fine with me. It's working fine. Big Roy has his job, and I have my job. He does the things that he does, and I do the things that I do. We're both helping Roy.

I really thought Roy was going to retire after the Johnson fight. That's what he told me, and I believed it. Then, in June, I went out to his farm. Roy wasn't there. I asked where he was, and his uncle said that he was out doing roadwork. A few weeks after that, Roy got the gym cleaned up. Then he started training; and the next thing I knew, there was a fight.