Sugar Ray Leonard Boxing Quotations

I was not athletically inclined. I was very quiet, introverted, non-confrontational. My three older brothers were athletes - basketball, football - but I was kind of a momma's boy. Then one day, my brother Roger encouraged me to go to the boxing gym with him. I tried the gloves on, and it just felt so natural.

Boxing was the only career where I wouldn't have to start out at the bottom. I had a good resume.

Boxing is the ultimate challenge. There's nothing that can compare to testing yourself the way you do every time you step in the ring.

Boxing is individual, although there's a team concept because you need a great corner, you need a great trainer, you need a great prep man, you need all of these things, but it's more of a Mano a Mano; it's more you versus me. I miss that time in training camp and Dad and Mom cooking meals. It was one big family.

Bruce Lee was an artist and, like him, I try to go beyond the fundamentals of my sport. I want the public to see a knockout in the making.

Boxing is a sport, but it's also entertainment. I wanted to transcend the sport and be considered just not as a fighter, or a champion, but someone very special.

Boxing brings out my aggressive instinct, not necessarily a killer instinct.

I always expect unexpected challenges. Boxing is not an easy sport.

Boxing should focus on pitting champion versus champion - those are the fights that everyone wants to see. The sports also needs to work on developing new heroes and personalities. I'd like to see more vignettes on fighters, focusing on their lives, goals and stories. Boxers need to be larger than life.

I was just such a quiet kid. I found boxing when I was 14 years old. I went down to the gym because my brother, who used to beat me up all the time, introduced me to boxing. I found boxing to be a sport that I felt safe in because I controlled what was in those four squares.

Without boxing, because of my neighborhoods, who knows what would have happened to me. It was always about following the leader. And I definitely was not a leader. Boxing gave me discipline; a sense of self. It made me more outspoken. It gave me more confidence.

I was painfully initiated into boxing, because the guys I fought were a lot bigger than me.

I enjoy the school run and being a dad. Boxing will always be with me. I like that.

I think I've become one of the best finishers in boxing; if I hurt a guy, I normally take him out.

I tried the gloves on, and it just felt so natural. From that moment I became so embedded in boxing. I found a friend in boxing.

This kid [Janks Morton, Jr.] was so special, although he's not a kid anymore, obviously, but he was there from day one of my rise through boxing. You know how the years go by and then, when you stop to reflect, you realize that someone was a part of your whole evolution as an individual? That's what I share with Junior.

I'm not in favor of that [mandating protective headgear ] because we learn as amateurs how to protect ourselves. And that's why there's a third man in the ring, the referee. And that's why there has to be a very strong boxing commission that doesn't allow guys in the ring who don't belong there.

You don't play boxing. You really don't. You play golf, you play tennis, but you don't play boxing.

Inactivity is the biggest sin in boxing.