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At times, I come across as crude or crass, that irritates you when I come across like a Neanderthal or a babbling idiot at times. But I like to be that person. I like to show you all that person because that's who you come to see.
I'm not a Republican, but I have some conservative views on certain things. I'm not a Democrat, either. It's just very difficult that these people hate each other over a belief. I think it all comes down to ego and competitiveness.
What I want to do in life is just be a respectful man and just take care of my children and guide my family in the right direction. I'm not looking to be a chairperson, I'm not looking to be ambassador or anything in that capacity.
I ain't never loan friends money; I give it to 'em and I don't expect to get it back. Even when he says, "I'll pay you back," I never expect it. If he gives it back, then hey, that's a feather in his cap, but I don't expect to get it back.
There are not many regrets that I have. There are a few things that I wish I'd changed in my life, but they are not so dramatic that I'd go out of my way to change them. But I go back and think about my life so far periodically in my head.
If I was fighting myself, I always say that I would kill Mike Tyson but then again I don't know how hard a punch Mike Tyson can take and I don't know how hard Mike Tyson's punch is. I don't know. For me looking at me, I think I can beat me.
You have to feel comfortable being uncomfortable. I'm always comfortable being uncomfortable. And to be comfortable being uncomfortable, I have to hone my discipline, which to me is doing what I have to do, but also doing it like I love it.
If you did everything your mind told you to do, you do some really strange stuff. You'll probably be in jail, you'll be in trouble. But, it's all about control. We all have to control our feelings. That's the thing that separates us from animals.
It's just good that Detroit is coming back. I'm so happy it's coming back because it needs to come back. When I do my trips around the world, and I can be anywhere, but I always see somebody from Detroit or Chicago. Those guys are world travelers.
I was an emotional manipulator of fighters . . . You have to know how to be cold, you know? Just have no -emotions, no feelings. It takes time, though, to develop that. I'd been working on that since I was 12 years old. It doesn't happen overnight.
I'm just a guy that is basically depending on my responsibility skills. I'm really responsible with my children and my wife and my family life. Things have changed with me. I'm not a night person anymore. I've got too many responsibilities to play.
You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day, unless you're too busy, then you should sit for an hour. If Tetris has taught me anything, it's that errors pile up & accomplishments disappear. Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
Without discipline, no matter how good you are, you are nothing! One day, and I might not be around; you're going to meet a tough guy who takes your best shot. He'll keep coming because he's tough. Don't get discouraged. That's when the discipline comes in.
I like entertaining people. I like being on stage. I like being in the life. This is what I do. This is the only thing I know how to do besides rob people and fight. Even when I was robbing people, I was entertaining them. But that's just what I love doing.
If they don't have that extreme addict personality, you can never understand how a guy can blow 300 or 400 million dollars. If I have to live at the top of the world, I also have to live at the bottom of the ocean. I don't know how to live in the middle of life.
It's just what I'm born to do, I'm born to entertain people. I could do it for thirty-thousand people or three people, it's just what I know how to do. My soul objective only is for me to have the audience say 'when's the next time I can see him?' That's what I do.
People see it [boxing] as a physical contact sport, but it's not. It's really a spiritual one of will against will. Who wants it the most? How much is he willing to take - and dish out - to get it? It's like fighting is 10 percent physical and 90 percent emotional.
I hope I can improve. I'm far from perfect. Sometimes, I wonder what would happen if I fought myself. I think it would be a one-round KO. But if I was fighting myself, I know I could take my best punch. No, make that two rounds. I would knock myself out in two rounds.
Becoming a vegan gave me another opportunity to live a healthy life. I was so congested from all the drugs and bad cocaine, I could hardly breathe, [I had] high blood pressure, [was] almost dying [and had] arthritis. And once I became a vegan all that stuff diminished.
I respect the media. But periodically things come up. Like the guy in Toronto [CP24 Interview]. This is what I run into, also. Everybody that helps you is not necessarily your friend. And everybody that fights you is not necessarily your enemy. So you always have to be on guard.
I never wanted to do anything else but fight, when I was a kid. I never had any broader perspective of my own perspective. I didn't know anything about anything else. I just wanted to fight until I could fight no more, and then I wanted to own a bar and drink and tell war stories.
I'm not used to sensitivity any more. When I see people cry when I lose, save your tears. I don't know how to handle people crying any more. I lost my sensitivity like that. Please, you embarrass me when you cry because I don't know what to do when you cry. I don't know what to say.
Emotion is more than just anger. When I am performing, I need emotion, but I need control, too. Emotion drives the best performance and is necessary, but it must be controlled. I believe Fedor [Emelianenko] does that. I do too. We may look different in how we do it, but we both do it.
I'll never be happy. I believe I'll die alone. I would want it that way. I've been a loner all my life with my secrets and my pain. I'm really lost, but I'm trying to find myself. I'm really a sad, pathetic case. My whole life has been a waste. I've been a failure. I just want to escape.
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.
Without struggle, there is no progress. There has to be struggle in your life. You have to grow in experience to control your ego. Cause, you know, an ego can be crushed, it can be killed, it can be smashed, but it comes back. It never dies. That's the thing about the ego: it never dies.
I love acting. I love stage work, more than anything. It's just live. It's right there in front of you. If you make a mistake, they know it and you know it. I won't do anything where I feel like I'm just making a fool out of myself. By doing that, I'm able to rise to my highest potential.
Discipline makes hard men. Every hard man is capable of being a killer. But every killer is not capable of being a hard man. They can't endure that much. It's all about the endurance. That's why they become killers. Because they can't endure the pain. They need to kill the pain to stop it.
It's interesting that you put me in the league with those illustrious fighters [Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Jack Johnson], but I've proved since my career I've surpassed them as far my popularity. I'm the biggest fighter in the history of the sport. If you don't believe it, check the cash register.
Fear is your best friend or your worst enemy. It's like fire. If you can control it, it can cook for you; it can heat your house. If you can't control it, it will burn everything around you and destroy you. If you can control your fear, it makes you more alert, like a deer coming across the lawn.
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.
Fighting is all about calmness and relaxation. My appearance was all an illusion. My appearance is of a mad man, but I'm really calm and collected. Even though I'm fighting, I'm calm and relaxed as possible, despite my displays, because once you get excited, you can't fight at the highest level of your ability.
I'm the best fighter in the world. No one can beat me....My objective is to inflict as much pain as possible, to win and win spectacularly...Ever since I was 12 years old, I was groomed to be the heavyweight champion of the world. I've been prepared to handle the pressure, the dealing with the press, everything.
To some people the ego is evil. It gives you so much. It gives you everything you want. But it takes back too much in return. It gives you everything: money, riches, women, glamour, everything you want. But in return it takes back so much, and you're soulless. That's its goal. The ego's goal is to leave you soulless.
I never saw my mother happy with me and proud of me for doing something: She only knew me as being a wild kid running the streets, coming home with new clothes that she knew I didn't pay for. I never got a chance to talk to her or know about her. Professionally, it has no effect, but it's crushing emotionally and personally.
Everyone in boxing probably makes out well except for the fighter. He's the only one that's on Skid Row most of the time; he's the only one that everybody just leaves when he loses his mind. He sometimes goes insane, he sometimes goes on the bottle, because it's an intensive pressure sport that allows people to just lose it.
We wanna believe that we're different than the average guy that's working 9-to-5, that our thoughts are different than his. Our inspirations and desires are different than his, that's why we succeed and he didn't cos we wanna believe we're different, but he just didn't get the break that we had...or he wasted it on something else.
I don't have to be that gentleman ["baddest man on the planet"] anymore. Now I have to be "this" guy. And in order to be "this" guy, I have to be smiling, I have to be gregarious, I have to be entertaining, and I have to be friendly. This is what my career needs now. I've adapted. But 20 years from now, I may need a different persona.
Fighting is spiritual. It appears to be physical from the layman's eyes. In my fights, I seemed to be angry and mad - all that stuff you saw me doing, the yelling and screaming and being mean in the ring - but I'm cool as a cucumber. I can hear everybody talking around me outside of the ring. I can see everybody. I know what is going on.
The one thing I know, everyone respects the true person and everyone's not true with themselves. All of these people who are heroes, these guys who have been lily white and clean all their lives, if they went through what I went through, they would commit suicide. They don't have the heart that I have. I've lived places they can't defecate in.
Fear and the thought of failure . . . But we don't really know what fear is. Fear is something that we create in our own minds. Fear could be like fire. You can use it to heat you up, keep you warm, cook your food. There are so many things you can use it for. But if you allow it to go out of control, it will destroy you and everything around you.
Me? I see an old, broke-ass black guy taking care of a bunch of kids, living life, taking them to school, and all that stuff, who's asking himself: What the hell is this? But I wouldn't give it up for the world because I love my wife. I never expected to have a life like this. No chaos... no confusion... no lawsuits... no violence... no going to jail.
I paid a worker at New York's zoo to re-open it just for me and Robin (his wife). When we got to the gorilla cage there was 1 big Silverback gorilla there just bullying all the other gorillas. They were so powerful but their eyes were like an innocent infant. I offered the attendant $10,000 to open the cage and let smash that silverback's snotbox! He declined.
Confidence applied properly is the path of genius. You must always be in a state of confidence. And the way you sustain a state of confidence is by testing yourself. Difficult quagmires that may occur; there's always a test. You have to seek them out. You constantly have to test yourself to prepare for these quagmires. That's why I always put myself to the test.
I don't want my kids to be like me, I don't want my daughter to date a guy like me. You know, for a guy like me success is to take care of my children to take care of their life and make 'em cushioned. I don't want them to be around people like me. You know, success for me would be that they never have the opportunity of being in the presence of someone like me.
I had it in my mind: to be confident, and to keep saying that until the confidence appeared. But I took it too far. Confidence did help make me champion, but, man, I took it to a whole different level. I was a megalomaniac. I was not humble and it eventually came back on me. So I want my kids to know, keep humbleness and kindness in their hearts. It will prevail.
One minute I'm robbing a dope house. Next minute I'm the youngest heavyweight champion of the world. I'm only 20, 19, with a lot of money. Who am I? What am I? I don't even know who I am. I'm just a dumb child who's being abused and robbed by lawyers. I'm just a dumb pugnacious fool. I'm just a fool who thinks he's someone. Then you tell me I should be responsible.
I just don't have the desire no more, I don't have the stomach to do it no more. I don't even kill insects in my house. I just don't kill anything no more. I used to kill pigeons, rip their heads off, 'You dirty rat pigeon!' I don't even have the heart to kill an animal no more. I just changed my whole life in general. That probably could have changed the way I fight.
People tell me I'm a comedian, but I don't approach acting from that perspective. I do know that everything in life has to do with your timing and perception. You have to be comfortable with the rhythm that you're in. You can't just jump into a fast rhythm if yours is slow. You might have to pick up the pace but in your own particular way. It has to do with personality, too.
Every punch I threw with bad intentions to a vital area...I aimed for his ear...I wanted to bust his eardrum...Every punch had bad intentions...My record will last for immortality, It'll never be broken...I want to live forever...I refuse to lose...I would have to be carried out dead to lose...I was coming to destroy and win the Heavyweight Championship of the World, which I done.