God lets everything happen for a reason. It's all a learning process, and you have to go from one level to another.

Fear is the greatest obstacle to learning. But fear is your best friend. Fear is like fire. If you learn to control it, you let it work for you. If you don’t learn to control it, it’ll destroy you and everything around you. Like a snowball on a hill, you can pick it up and throw it or do anything you want with it before it starts rolling down, but once it rolls down and gets so big, it’ll crush you to death. So one must never allow fear to develop and build up without having control over it, because if you don’t you won’t be able to achieve your objective or save your life.

I guess I'll fade off into bolivian

I still can’t believe [ Muhammad Ali ] knows my name. It astounds me he knows who I am. I first met Ali in 1976. I was locked up in a juvenile home and he came to visit. I’ve never forgotten it.

That's what people respect, the fact that I wasn't a chump that laid on his back and gave up.

I'm happy because - I'm not doing anything deceitful, I think, to my family. I'm successful because I don't have to sleep with one of my friends' girlfriends or wife or something. That's why I'm successful, that's success to me. I'm not dead, I'm not in the gutter - that's success to me.

Boxing is an ego-driven sport. The idea is to not get too personal or emotional with it. You just know when it's over, it's over, and that's it.