Sugar Ray Leonard Quotes

Spread your love and fly.

Look at football, where you still have injuries no matter how much they improve the helmets and other equipment.

Bruce Lee was an artist and, like him, I try to go beyond the fundamentals of my sport. I want the public to see a knockout in the making.

I think I've become one of the best finishers in boxing; if I hurt a guy, I normally take him out.

In Italy, I had an Afro, and a lot of the kids came up and felt my hair. It really was funny. I wish I had understood Italian.

Although it was a great accomplishment to win a gold medal, as soon as they put it on you, that's it; your career is over.

I'm a free agent. I haven't allowed any promoters to have exclusive options on my fight. I don't need a promoter.

If I hadn't had the talent, the networks wouldn't have televised my fights. No one has made me; I made myself. I paid my dues

You don't play boxing. You really don't. You play golf, you play tennis, but you don't play boxing.

Inactivity is the biggest sin in boxing.

Aaron Pryor wants to get into the ring with me. He wants to be able to retire, and he will. For health reasons.

I retired and came back in '97. Woo! I mean, come on! I don't know, man. A six-year layoff? That was crazy! My career was relatively short, whether you look at either its length in years or the number of fights I had. But it was brutal.

I was painfully initiated into boxing, because the guys I fought were a lot bigger than me.

When I was 15 or 16 and I started climbing up the ladder of success in amateur boxing, a reporter asked me, "What do you want to be?" I think he was expecting me to say, "A champion." I said, "I want to be special." I don't know why I said that, but I didn't just want to be a fighter. I wanted to have an impact with people, particularly kids.

I wanted to be like Bruce Jenner.

I'm not religious, but I believe that what I have is a gift, and I respect it and live up to it.

I lay around and wonder why you were always there for me.

My toughest fight was myself. For me to disclose and let things out was not easy because we don't want to seem weak or like we are different, but I learned that it's okay.

You just don't heal that easy unless you're young.

I'm a competitor and a very proud man. If a guy beats me once, he'll have to do it again to make me believe him.

I consider myself blessed. I consider you blessed. We've all been blessed with God-given talents. Mine just happens to be beating people up.

Generally, the more weight you put on, the less effective you are.

My ambition is not to be just a good fighter. I want to be great, something special.

I want to be great, something special.

I've always believed that you can be whatever you want to be if you are willing to sacrifice and dedicate yourself.

To be honest, I don't know. I started one [book] back in 1982 or '83 when I first retired. But I was only 25 or 26 and not ready to write my memoirs.

Someone once said there was a comparison between Sugar Ray Leonard and Sugar Ray Robinson. Believe me, there's no comparison. Sugar Ray Robinson was the greatest.

Boxing brings out my aggressive instinct, not necessarily a killer instinct.

I found boxing when I was 14 years old. I went down to the gym because my brother, who used to beat me up all the time, introduced me to boxing. I found boxing to be a sport that I felt safe in because I controlled what was in those four squares.