To be sure, boxing has always been, at best, a shady and sometimes cutthroat business, buttressed by hype and tomfoolery rivalling, at times, that of carnival circuses.
When archaeologists discover the missing arms of Venus de Milo, they will find she was wearing boxing gloves.
I am the astronaut of boxing. Joe Louis and Dempsey were just jet pilots. I'm in a world of my own.
I never got into training to be an All-Ireland boxing champ or to win a belt. At the start, I just got into it to learn how to defend myself when I got into situations.
In my teenage years, I started kickboxing, then did a little boxing. When the UFC and MMA exploded in the early 2000s in the U.S.A. and Japan, I saw a way to make money and a career.
I could have 10 kids or be boxing until I'm 40.
I started boxing because of my brother. And then I came to admire the all-time greats, like Roberto Duran and Muhammad Ali. I'd say I admired Ali more than any fighter in my life.
I started a youth center in Houston. The kids would come in and want to learn to box; they wanted to tear up the world, beat up the world. And I'd try to show them they didn't need anger. They didn't need all that killing instinct they'd read about. You can be a human being and pursue boxing as a sport.
I didn't even know about amateur boxing, period.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
Boxing has become America's tragic theater.
One thing I like about boxing is that I will not have to deal with the same kind of politics that I had to in skating. In boxing, it is not about your appearance, or how your costume looks, what color it is, or how much it costs.
The debate analysis in the media is rampant with contest analogies of war, baseball, boxing, football; you name it. Any testosterone contest imaginable is fair game.
Growing up with my brothers all boxing has stood me in good stead for nights like these. You should have seen some the fights we used to have in our front room.
Boxing is the embodiment of who I am, but beyond that, this is a journey of the self, and my obsession to get the most from this short life.
Trejo is one of the oldest boxing gyms in Cuba; it's outdoor, and every great champion the country has produced has passed through and was forged in the open air.
I always joke that I want to be able to retire from boxing and still be able to look into the mirror without seeing scars all over my face. I love my sport, but I would rather not have to spend hours doing my makeup to cover up the memories once I retire.
No sport - maybe no business - is more entrepreneurial than boxing.
And I love kick boxing. It's a lot of fun. It gives you a lot of confidence when you can kick somebody in the head.
I knew boxing before I knew anything else.
It's less about the physical training, in the end, than it is about the mental preparation: boxing is a chess game. You have to be skilled enough and have trained hard enough to know how many different ways you can counterattack in any situation, at any moment.
I always put my boxing first.
For the last years now I've had my own academy where I train Brazilian Jujitsu and Tae boxing, Muay Thai everyday.
I've been a boxing fan ever since I was a kid.
I think the beauty and mystery of boxing is just the immediacy of how it reveals people unlike anything else.
When I came into boxing, I brought it to the next level with adverts and doing pantomime and people just got jealous of me doing that.
Where most kids play stickball and hockey, I'd walk down the streets with two sets of boxing gloves and knock on my friend's door and see if he wanted to box. There were boxing gyms on every corner.
I don't like to run. You will not see me running on a treadmill ever. Ever! I like boxing, though, so if I can go to the gym and box for 30 minutes, I will.
I was like any other kid: very normal, I can say. I just was a simple kid that came from a humble family and was taught by my father to be a family man and be committed to them. I stepped into boxing following my older brothers.
While I was boxing professionally, I never thought about my looks. The furthest thing from my mind was 'messing up my pretty face' when I was on my way to the ring to meet my opponent. Yet, people I'd meet along the way would always ask me if I was worried about my looks. Then they would go on to say that I was 'too pretty to box.'
Boxing is the most beautiful thing after women.
Our boxing is not like the men's. It's more thoughtful, more technical. It's not just, 'Get in there and hurt someone.'
But if you cover the World Series on the news or do a feature on an Ali boxing match then all of a sudden ears go up all over the place and people say what the hell are you doing. The reason for that is that we're doing something that people are really interested in.
Politics is comparable to boxing. The only thing is that in politics there are basically no rules. In boxing, you can get a black eye, but in politics you can get poison in your food or a bullet in the head. It's definitely rougher and tougher than other sports.
I lost my edge for boxing, I didn't put as much into it as I did before. I didn't run as far. I didn't train as hard. I didn't eat correctly. I started drinking a little bit every now and then.
For the most part, I think video games do a good job of capturing the essence of boxing. However, I'd like to continue to see them push the realism, emphasizing the skill involved.
