If I'm in a situation where Duane Ford is one of the judges, I have to pick it up.

You think it's hard for me when I go in the ring and fight? That's the least of my problems. I think about the five years that I did in prison. I think about the nine years on parole. Nothing - nothing! - can compare to that struggle. I'm telling you, from being an ex-convict with 30 convictions, a degree nowhere to be found and black? I'm done.

The streets was basically my parents.

I have the philosophy that I'm different. I have the body, the well-being and the experience. Now the teacher gets to show the student that he's worthy of the lesson. Let me show him through experience.

The controversy was that Chad Dawson thought he was in an MMA fight and not a boxing match.

Early on in my career I had the kind of anxious where you couldn't sleep at night. That anxiousness is like a virus we all have in us. Some you can deal with but some will wipe you out.

Anybody who thinks I'm taking this fight for a paycheck doesn't know me. My whole life I've been achieving the impossible.