I don't react to a tragic happening any more. I took so many bad things as a kid and some people think I don't care about anything. It's just too hard for me to get emotional. I can't cry no more.

I never look at a high point in my career. Everyone thinks about the Spinks fight, but that fight only lasted 91 seconds, so it's hard to say it defined my career.

I didn't come from a household where my mother dragged me outside and said, "You'd better fight." My mother wouldn't let me fight. I was not an aggressive kid.

When I fight someone, I want to break his will. I want to take his manhood. I want to rip out his heart and show it to him.

Cus was my father but he was more than a father. You can have a father and what does it mean?—it doesn't really mean anything. Cus was my backbone . . . . He did everything for my best interest . . . . We'd spend all our time together, talk about things that, later on, would come back to me. Like about character, and courage. Like the hero and the coward: that the hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It's the same thing, fear, but it's what you do with it that matters.

I try my best to learn from other people's mistakes. I have a lot of respect for people who can change.

In the scheme of life, in emotion and loss, I responded the way I did. I lost. I shouldn't have responded that way. I've had some people tell me that I did a great thing - sticking up for myself - but to me, personally, with the way that I handled my emotions, I lost. But I learned. That will not happen again.