When I saw Tyson knocking everybody out on TV, I thought, He's goooood. But when I saw him in person, he didn't look as awesome.

At first I didn’t give a damn to go down in history. I wanted to win. But the more I won, the more I thought about leaving something behind. Yes, it's as important as hell to me. I want to leave something that people will remember me by. Of course, a lot of boxers want to do that. But it's not easy. Take Larry Holmes, he was the big man after Muhammad Ali, he wanted to emulate him, but for some reason the public didn’t take him like they did to Ali. I think people won’t fully understand what I contributed to the sport for years.

If I don't feel the same hunger as I once did then I definitely shouldn't box any more.

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

The media can make boxers, controls who makes it big and who doesn’t. They can build up fighters or knock them down.

Sometimes the image of the intellectual boxer did for me more harm than good. If a boxer has a reputation as an intellectual, some people no longer respect him as a fighter. With me it was always ‘Lennox should react, not think’. But that’s nonsense. Only the guy who controls his opponent wins.

Sometimes success needs interruption to regain focus and shake off complacency.