I grew up in Beaufort, South Carolina, in a six-room farmhouse with a couple of leaning posts to keep it from fallin'. I came up in a time when men were men.

Since I was a boy of five or six, I had it in my mind I would be a world boxing champion.

Work is the only meanin' I've ever known. Like the man in the song says, I just gotta keep on keepin' on.

I wasn't a big guy. People thought the big guys would eat me up. But it was the other way around. I loved to fight bigger guys.

I had my Olympic gold medal cut up into eleven pieces. Gave all eleven of my kids a piece. It'll come together again when they put me down.

I don't think a man has to go around shouting and play-acting to prove he is something. And a real man don't go around putting other guys down, trampling their feelings in the dirt, making out they're nothing.

His mouth made him feel like he was gonna win. Not his hands, I had my hand. He had his lips.