People ask me about that all the time. They say, "Did you ever think of directing?" And I say, "It's completely out of the question."

Where I come from, being a hard man is being able to take a good beating and then get back up again and carry on fighting.

The two sports are as different as Ping-Pong and rugby. In boxing, you don’t know what’s going to happen. In wrestling, it’s already prearranged. But the thing I didn’t know about wrestling is that you really get hurt. Because, you know, you’re wrestling in front of a live audience, and you end up doing things like jumps or slams, and 40 percent of the time you don’t land right.

I couldn't direct traffic. It's hard enough just acting.

I behaved worse than anybody for 15 years, and you have to pay the price for that. I used to blame other people, then therapy made me realise I had to change.

Being out of work for 13 to 15 years is no walk in the park.

I tried to change my name for the fights, but the only way they could pay me money was if I used my own name. I wanted to change my name to, like, Romeo something-or-other, and they said, "No, we can't do that. We've got to use Mickey Rourke." Because they paid me a lot of money to go over to Europe and Asia to fight.