I've been a boxing fan ever since I was a kid.

You play your character and it isn't right to step out of it. You have to stay in that character.

You open the show with a bang, then don't come back on for 45 minutes.

Rocky Marciano had such guts and heart. He was something special.

And of course coming from Massachusetts, Rocky Marciano was my favorite.

I can tell jokes. I can talk to the audience. I can relax. I can change my songs whenever I want. I can change the tempos. I can change the mood, because I'm in charge.

When you sing a song the way I sing it, you have to use your whole body. It's almost like working out.

I've been a boxing fan ever since I was a kid.

I don't watch a lot of featherweight fights yet some of those fights are the best fights ever.

You have to remember, I didn't want this life.

Hey, I've been doing what I do for a long time, my friend.

The only good thing about going to the fights is you can go into the green room and you can see some of your old friends that you haven't seen in a long time.

There's nobody in show business that I dislike so I wouldn't want to get in there to hurt anybody.

I used to be afraid of looking at the audience.

I used to have trouble in front of an audience. I felt uncomfortable.

If people like what I do, fine. If they don't, fine.

Why stop now when I'm just getting the hang of it?

I think that people who have Vegas throat are people who sing from their throats only.

I was born in Massachusetts and lived there until I was thirteen years old.

But I don't work out. I pay people to do that for me.

Ali and I have become friends over the years. I was on a plane with him one time when he was the champion.

Joe Louis was one of my first heroes.

When I sing full-on I use my whole body. I open my throat and let it fly out.

Ali's daughter is fighting and Joe Frazier's daughter is fighting as well.

I wanted to be a plumber.

I like being on this stage because it keeps me thinking.

It's obvious that they're going to want Ali's daughter and Frazier's daughter to fight it out.

I only eat one meal a day. Lunch, not dinner.

I'm a performer. We don't retire.

I was drawn to boxing because I got beat up as a kid. I was the kid with the piano books in a New York neighbourhood.

In boxing, everybody has their favorites.

People say it's a movie about boxing, but... I don't agree at all. I don't think it's a movie about boxing. Boxing is like a platform. It's just a stage where this is played out.

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.

It's kind of ironic that the two sports with the greatest characters, boxing and horse racing, have both been on the decline. In both cases it's for the lack of a suitable hero.

In those days, boxing was very glamorous and romantic. You listened to fights on the radio, and a good announcer made it seem like a contest between gladiators.

See, I respect boxing because it has given me so much and that's why I will never allow anyone to mistreat the sport of boxing if I can help it.

A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.

Muhammad Ali was the kind of guy you either loved or hated, but you wanted to see him. I happen to really love him. He brought boxing to another level and always made you laugh.

Handball, swimming, running, jumping, basketball, and boxing were as much a part of me as breathing.

Boxing is a lot of white men watching two black men beat each other up.

New York's like a boxing match. In Hollywood, it's like a Fellini movie or something.

All of the sports have a safety net, but boxing is the only sport that has none. So when the fighter is through, he is through. While he was fighting his management was very excited for him, but now that he is done, that management team is moving on.

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.

Boxing is show-business with blood.

I've been a boxing fan ever since I was a kid.

A boxing match is like a cowboy movie. There's got to be good guys and there's got to be bad guys. And that's what people pay for - to see the bad guys get beat.

Boxing gave me the opportunities to grow into the person that I am today.

Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost.

I like boxing movies. One of the hardest things for me to watch as far as boxing films, is the boxing. The actual boxing usually sucks.