I think that there's only one nationality and one language in the sport, and you call it performance.

It was like a musician playing notes. Everything we trained worked.

My brother is a doctor and he will take care of post-traumatic stress. I think he'll do it for free.

I have a Ph.D. in philosophy and sports science. At 14, I went through this really tough Soviet training system. A lot of my roommates got psychologically broken or physically injured. Either you came through, or you were out. I made my Ph.D. work in the field of young athletes aged 14-19 because at this age any human is changing.

That's the most terrible mistake you can make: to relax. It's difficult to become a champion, but it's more difficult to maintain it for many years because you're getting too comfortable.

I run, but boxing conditioning is different, so you have to get used to running in the ring. Boxing movements are very different. Swimming is one of the best because every single muscle is working. I swim a lot. I train very hard at things that mimic boxing. I have to do mostly sport-specific training, such as lots of sparring.

In Soviet times the border was closed so we couldn't get out of the country, and I had been reading Robinson Crusoe. I wanted to see the ocean, I wanted to see boats, I wanted to see black people, because we didn't have that in the Soviet Union. I was all excited by that stuff.