The fact is that Mike Tyson bit through my trousers and took a significant piece of flesh out of my thigh.

If you’ve got physical weaknesses, you’ll lose. Nobody who gets cut easily can be a champion, however strong and talented he is. Boxers are trained to see and exploit their opponents’ weaknesses, they hit you on your wounds. Only the strongest survive in this sport.

Different fights bring out different things. I consider myself a seasoned professional. I have done things in the gym that have not come out yet. People would be amazed if they saw me train.

Patience is a part of boxing. After I had missed out on the Olympic gold medal in 1984, a lot of people tried to talk me into turning professional quickly to make money. They told me that the next Olympics in Seoul would be boycotted again, that I was wasting my life, blah blah. But I still had unfinished business. I wanted the gold medal, and I got it in ‘88. Only then was I ready to turn professional.

There were different heroes with different images. There was Mike Tyson, the animal, there was Evander Holyfield, the devout, the priest. And there was me, the thinker, the intellectual boxer. So there was something for every fan, if you like. The public could always identify with one of us.

[Kirk] Johnson throws some heavy punches and is a knockout fighter. This is what people want to see. They want to see a fight, they want to see punches and they want to see action.

As a boxer I took the liberty of using not only my fists, but also my head.