“I couldn’t fart in an elevator without people wanting to sue me.”
“I thought I was bulletproof, and I’m not.”
“Talk about the area of overcoming adversity, sucking it up, I rate myself a 10.”
“I don’t believe in past lifetimes, but if there was one, I had to be a gladiator.”
“Everybody’s looking at me expecting me to shrink up and die.”
“My life has been very much a roller coaster ride. Not just the boxing part, not just the acting part, just my childhood, what I was into at a young age and the things I was exposed to, it’s just very abnormal.”
“I realize that there’s a whole generation of kids out there like me who are totally disregarding the moral values taught to us by our parents.”
“I have a bad habit of fighting to the level of my competition.”
“I lived a permissive, fast, and reckless lifestyle. I hope I can serve as a warning that living this lifestyle can really lead to only one thing, and that’s misery.”
“To all my young fans out there, I ask that you no longer consider me a role model. See me as an individual who had the opportunity to be a role model but blew it. Blew it with irresponsible, irrational, immature decisions.”
“I just want to pursue my dream. That is to fight. That is what God put me here to do. He didn’t put me here to be a doctor or a lawyer. He put me here to fight.”
“Everyone wants to see the heavyweight division unified. It’ll happen.”
“There’s nothing more intimidating than crawling into a ring.”
“I’ll trust an attorney before I’ll trust a doctor.”
“I will lay down and die before I take any drugs.”
“I remember talking to Magic the day I announced I had HIV. He was preaching, ‘Do what your doctor tells you.’ Well, I didn’t have a doctor then, so I got down on my knees, and I prayed.”
“People think I’m crazy, and it’s been written in the papers that I’m off my rocker.”
“I’ve seen God work in my life, and I know what he’s capable of, and I know what he does for his people that love him.”
“HIV’s never been proven to cause AIDS. HIV ain’t ever killed anybody.”
“I’ve got the most complex – my life isn’t boring. It never has been.”
“I just want to fight the world. Fight the system. Fight everybody.”
“I’ve got plenty of contacts in Hollywood.”
“The heavyweight division needs me.”
“I cut my hand swimming in the Caribbean, it gets infected, and Channel 9 is calling me saying they heard rumors I cut my fingers off.”
“I’ll tell you this: Tommy Morrison has a tattoo of Elvis Presley on his butt, he likes to hunt and fish, and his favorite movie is ‘GoodFellas.’”
“People watch me… whatever I do, wherever I go.”
“If I was black or Hispanic, I wouldn’t get any criticism. Because I’m white, people expect so much more out of me. That’s a little unfair, but life isn’t fair.”
“As a white fighter, you get twice as much criticism.”
“I’ve had a lot of people tell me I’m faster than Tyson.”
“I never – I mean, I never saw any doctor’s report saying I was HIV positive. I never had a doctor explain to me and show me what was going on.”
“In the heavyweight division, you can’t afford to make a mistake.”
“I’ve fought tactical fights in a gym, but never in a fight before.”
“I didn’t live in L.A. I lived in Oklahoma, and I liked to do normal things with normal people.”
“I don’t think I have HIV. I don’t think that I ever had HIV. I think I had hepatitis. I got rid of the hepatitis, and since then, every single time I have tested for HIV, it has been negative. The original test was a false positive.”
“The rug was yanked out from under my feet by a misdiagnosis. All I want to do is fight.”
“Something that comes along with age causes you to simmer a bit.”
“I hate being around boxing people. I’d rather be back in the gym.”
“I’m guilty of reverse discrimination. I’m white, and people don’t think that white fighters are any good.”
“The mind is a very strong thing.”
“You can sit there and worry yourself sick if you’re a mentally weak person.”
“I knew the HIV virus was something anyone could get but also believed the chances were very slim… I honestly believed I had a better chance of winning the lottery than contracting this disease. I have never been so wrong in my life.”
“The rush you get from competing in front of the whole world, there’s nothing like it.”
“With my style, training is very rigorous. You’re toe-to-toe, getting beat on six days a week for five or six weeks leading to a fight. There’s no fun, no glamour.”
“I just turned 27 years old, and there are mornings where my knees and ankles really hurt. I hurt all over. I would hate to be me when I’m 35 years old. I’ll be a basket case, but I will have a lot of memories.”
“When I lost to Ray Mercer, I was young. I deserved to lose that fight because I hadn’t learned how to cover all the angles in preparation. I was immature.”
“If I met a girl, I’d tell her straight up, ‘I might run into someone else I want to go out with; don’t be offended.’ Was that acceptable to them? It had to be. There were enough girls. They were expendable.”
“I have had a couple of situations where I wasn’t the strongest person in the world.”
“God, it’s good to come home. No matter what you achieve, you come home, and everything is normal.”
“I know one thing: Ray Mercer is not going down from a head punch. I think he’s got one of the best chins in the game.”
“Boxing is a family tradition. The last five generations down to my dad have been fighters.”
“The ‘Tough Man’ contests were for 21-year-olds, but I weighed 150 pounds at 13, so I got a fake ID card and entered. My dad and uncles had given me an edge, so having a boxing background made it easier because a lot of the older guys didn’t know how to fight.”
“I’m happy in Oklahoma. It’s closer to family. Nobody expects anything of you there.”
“It’s a big move from the ‘Tough Man’ circuit to professional boxing. When I turned pro, I had to play catch-up and was fighting almost twice a month until I had more than 20 fights under my belt.”
“I would walk into a room, and people would be like, ‘Hide the children. Here comes the guy with AIDS.’ That’s very demeaning, and it really hurts your spirit.”
“People need to cut me a break.”
“I could always fight overseas, but who wants to do that? They’d really have to make it worth my while.”
“HIV changed my life, but I think I’ve accepted it. I don’t even think about it unless someone brings it up.”
“The fact that there’s never been a single documented case in the history of this planet of anyone ever contracting HIV in the ring seems to me like a leg perfectly strong enough to stand on in terms of a lawsuit.”
“Very few fighters get a chance to come back.”
“My life out of the ring caught up with me.”
“I’ve always been painted as this party animal.”
“It took me awhile to learn the public eye was on me.”
“I’m a white guy in a black sport. I really forget about it until someone asks me about it. I’m simply competing in a sport that I love.”
“I saw a chance to make the 1988 Olympic boxing team and forgot all about football.”
“I would welcome a Mike Tyson fight with open arms.”
“Friendships can go only so far.”
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life.”
“People thought I was crazy for fighting Michael Bentt.”
“I like fighting people that scare me a little bit. People that scare me seem to motivate me, and when you motivate me, you get the best performance out of me.”
“I don’t ever think in terms of losing. That’s not even a possibility. I’ve been beaten once, and I don’t ever want to experience that again.”
“I am not a big fan of Mike Tyson. I almost idolized him for what he did in the ring – he was such a great fighter. But his behavior out of the ring… he needed to realize he was in the public eye, and there is a responsibility.”
“When I was 19, my heart wasn’t in it. I hated training.”
“I was one of the most popular fighters of my era.”
“I didn’t have the greatest equipment or the greatest facilities. I would see people with new shoes and better cars. I knew what I wanted and what I had to do to get what I wanted. I became a very Spartan person at a young age because of that.”
“The one thing that made me somewhat of an animal is I didn’t have anything growing up.”
“I think there’s a lot of people out there who, if George Foreman had to get beat, I’m the one fighter they would like to see beat him.”
“People don’t like to see a sloppy fight, to see heavyweights wallow around. They like to see exciting fighters.”
“Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been confident of coming out on top in a brawl, but the ring is a lot different from a bar. That’s been my problem.”
“Boy, I wouldn’t want to live in L.A.”
“I’m going to bring the championship home to Kansas City.”
“There’s a family tradition of fighting in the Kansas City Golden Gloves. My older brother, Tim, did, and so did my father’s two youngest brothers, Trent and Troy. They all won the Golden Gloves. So when my mother asked me to keep the tradition going, I did.”
“I thought I had the potential to be a better fighter than I’d ever be a football player. Besides, it was something my father always wanted me to do. He told me since I was a little kid I was a born fighter.”
“I boxed until I got interested in other things. My first car. Girls.”
“I was the first player at Jay to play four years varsity. As a frosh, I was a punter. From my soph through senior years, I started as a linebacker and tight end and was all-state as a senior.”
“Ray Mercer has the heart of a lion and a great chin.”
“You don’t knock Ray Mercer out with one or two shots. You have to make him quit.”
Leave a Reply