I'm proud, and Islam did it. And after these things that I heard in church, a preacher and watching this and that, I knew something was wrong but I couldn't pinpoint it.
I'm a fighter. I believe in the eye-for-an-eye business. I'm no cheek turner. I got no respect for a man who won't hit back. You kill my dog, you better hide your cat.
I say get an education. Become an electrician, a mechanic, a doctor, a lawyer, anything but a fighter. In this trade, it's the managers that make the money and last the longest.
Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.
Boxing is a stepping stone just to introduce me to the audience. If I was still in Louisville, Kentucky and never was a boxer I still might get killed next week in some kind of freedom struggle and you'd ever hear the news.
Friendship is not something you can learn in college or some learning institution, no one knows how to become friends you just become but if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship you haven't learned anything
I make predictions about what I'm going to do before a fight, that makes me nervous because I've gotten so good at it until people really look for me to do it.If I say the man's going to fall in round five, like your man Henry Cooper here, he was stopped in round five but it was on a cut - it wasn't because he was out. But usually 'm on the spot with my predictions and some people really gamble and bet money on the rounds I say.
Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?