Quotes & Sayings About Boxing

You're in a fight to the death. This isn't a
boxing match. You can't win by scoring the most points. — Jeaniene Frost

There are two kinds of people in boxing. Those who say, 'Oh, boy; Tom Hauser is writing an article about me,' and those who say, 'Big problem; Tom Hauser is writing an article about me.' — Jim Lampley

Joe Louis was one of my closest friends ... I'm a great boxing fan. I used to go to the American Legion Stadium in Hollywood, every Friday night for 15 years. Down the aisle would come Lupe Velez, Johnny Weismuller, Mae West. All at ringside. — Mickey Rooney

Wow. I'm humbled and I'm honored. To be in the International Boxing Hall of Fame with so many of my friends and heroes is overwhelming. — Ray Mancini

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.' — Laila Ali

Sorry dude, but we're in a boxing match and you went against your word and tried to make me look weak and stupid in front of 17 million people. That's just not gonna happen. — Dustin Diamond

Boxing is a buzz, but I went into it to make a living. I wasn't going to go into the ring and get punched in the head for the fun of it. — Frank Bruno

When I got up I stuck to my plan - stumbling forward and getting hit in the face. — Randall Cobb

James Franco is a Method actor. I respect Method actors, but he never snapped out of character. Whenever we'd have to get in the ring for boxing scenes, and even during practice, the dude was full-on hitting me. — Tyrese Gibson

I didn't push Cory. I wanted him to decide if he wanted to go into boxing and he did. Can't blame it on me. — Leon Spinks

I think we have tremendous media covering the sport of boxing, even if boxing is a little bit lost in popularity with MMA sports. And I think that with the show 'Lights Out' it's going to get more attention to the sport, and it's going to put more attention to the problems that athletes in general have. — Wladimir Klitschko

When you can count your money, you ai'nt got none. — Don King

What people don't know is that I'm a blackbelt in jujitsu, which I've been for 20 years, and I've been boxing since I've been 15 years old - those are things that come natural to me. — Frank Grillo

Don King is a damn sleezebag. King is nothing but a strong-arm man. He has taken his gangsterism and put it into boxing. — Don King

From the very beginning I used sound business practices in everything I did. White businessman uses them to make money he's a genius. Black businessman uses them he's a crook. That's the way it is. — Don King

Be it in the rough-and-tumble world of inner-city politics or the bare-knuckle boxing ring, the Irish rightly earned their fightin' moniker. — Rashers Tierney

THE FINE LINE BETWEEN FEAR AND COURAGE "I tell my kids, what is the difference between a hero and a coward? What is the difference between being yellow and being brave? No difference. Only what you do. They both feel the same. They both fear dying and getting hurt. The man who is yellow refuses to face up to what he's got to face. The hero is more disciplined and he fights those feelings off and he does what he has to do. But they both feel the same, the hero and the coward. People who watch you judge you on what you do, not how you feel." - CUS D'AMATO, LEGENDARY BOXING TRAINER — Ben Horowitz

Nothing will kill boxing, and nothing can save it. — Larry Merchant

The professor at the boxing gymnasium wore mustaches and was very precise and jerky and went all to pieces if you started after him. — Ernest Hemingway,

If I were 50 years younger, I would kick your ass — Larry Merchant

Mike Tyson has been given ever penny he has coming. — Don King

Boxing is a contest of character and ingenuity. The boxer with more will, determination, desire, and intelligence is always the one who comes out the victor. — Cus D'Amato

Baseball, football, basketball - these quintessentially American pastimes are recognizably sports because they involve play: they are games. One plays football, one doesn't play boxing ... The boxing match is the very image, the more terrifying for being so stylized, of mankind's collective aggression; its ongoing historical madness. — Joyce Carol Oates

I don't see you making a movie about Bob Arum. — Don King

People don't realize what they had till it's gone. Like President Kennedy, there was no one like him, the Beatles, and my man Elvis Presley. I was the Elvis of boxing. — Muhammad Ali

Because two propositions can be true at once," he said. "Because the world is imperfect. Because we are imperfect. Because sometimes we're called upon to do terrible things. And because we define ourselves in dying, which is," he indicated by motioning with his head toward the arena, "what this is. Give us at least that. — Mark Helprin

Boxing is a more sophisticated form of hockey. — George Carlin

Stop moving around.'
'Your opponent"
Daniel panted
"isn't going to stand still and just let you hit him.' He held his boxing mitts out in front of him, welcoming a new attack.
He would if he knew what was good for him. — Bree Despain

Clay is so young and has been misled by the wrong people ... He might as well have joined the Ku Klux Klan. — Floyd Patterson

Boxing, jiu-jitsu, scaling the Matterhorn ... I did cardio before cardio was cool. — Theodore Roosevelt

This kid deserves anything good that happens to him. He's such a good guy. He's just the nicest human being you want to meet. — Angelo Dundee

Boxing has always been a primarily urban pastime (whereas the defining suburban sport is auto-racing, in which the machine and its anonymous mechanics hold far greater importance than the driver). When white Americans left the cities, they left boxing as well. — A.J. Liebling

To recognize that head injuries were as essential a part of football as they are of boxing would be to erase the fine distinction on which the game's respectability rested. — Charlie Pierce

It's hard to land a devastating jab/cross/hook/uppercut combo to your reader's imagination when you're telegraphing your punches. — Don Roff

The side's all right, but my bloody knees are killing me! — Dai Dower

I want someone to attack me. No weapons. Just me and him. I like to beat men and beat them bad — Mike Tyson

I didn't excel too highly in school, but I felt that I was moving ahead - and not just in boxing - but in life. — Sugar Ray Leonard

So I run straight to the goal with purpose in every step. I fight to win. I'm not just shadow-boxing or playing around. (I Cor. 9:26) — Anonymous

Any fighter didn't like Muhammad Ali should have his head examined. — Angelo Dundee

Sometimes you need to be awkward to beat awkwardness — Charlie Flynn

There is boxing and then there is me. The rest are just falling in line behind me or are trying to get in line to fight me. And that includes Manny Pacquiao too. — Floyd Mayweather Jr.

I'm probably better known for boxing with Hemingway than for anything I've written. — Morley Callaghan

I've always loved boxing. It's something I've always been extremely excited about. — Louis C.K.

There's one thing I remember about Muhammad Ali. He said "I don't like my condition, but if this is what the Good Lord has planned for me to deal with, I'm happy with that." You have to understand, that comes from my idol, one of the guys that got me started in boxing. — Roy Jones Jr.

Floyd Mayweather is bigger than the sport. That's the thing. Because you can go to somebody who don't even know what boxing is and say, "Floyd Mayweather." They'll go, "Oh, I know Floyd Mayweather. I've heard that name." — Floyd Mayweather Jr.

I was also an only child and my father really wanted a son - he's from that generation - it was always about kung-fu theater on Sundays and boxing games on the weekend. — Milla Jovovich

There's no way I would want to hurt him or bust him up. That's why, for the sake of the family as well as himself, I will take him out in the opening round. — Mike Tyson

The match would have to be made at 165 pounds. Sean can't make 160 any more, even though he's drinking lite beer these days — Angelo Dundee

My main objective is to be professional but to kill him. — Mike Tyson

I'd become an uncertain creature in her mind, and I found I liked it; she couldn't fathom what else I might be doing when her eyes weren't on me. — Anna Freeman

This fight isn't about boxing, it's something deeper than that. — Bernard Hopkins

I'd have to say losing the title to Ali in '74 was the lowest moment in sports for me. It was the most devastating thing in my boxing career, and it still hurts to this day. — George Foreman

The boxing world is full of all kinds of corruption. — Al Sharpton

It's not always true that all the world's a stage. Sometimes it's a boxing ring. Right now I had a ringside seat at the Windjammer restaurant in Etonville, New Jersey. — Suzanne M. Trauth

My mother gave me boxing gloves; I wanted boxing gloves. I liked to box. So I still have them. They're still in my bookcase, very old, tattered, and they were cherished. — Pierce Brosnan

Boxing is a lot of preparation and then improvising, so there are parallels to being an actor. — Seth Numrich

I was called Rembrandt Hope in my boxing days, because I spent so much time on the canvas. — Bob Hope

I love boxing. I really respect the guys and admire the guys who do it. But, I'm very, very happy with my career as an actor. I made the right choice and things are really working out for me right now, but I won't pretend that there isn't a part of me that always secretly wanted to be a boxer. — Holt McCallany

My team members are Hector Soto, who is a boxing promoter and Vice-president of Miguel Cotto Promotions. He runs all my business. He was the person that my father left in charge of it all. Bryan Perez is my right-hand man. — Miguel Cotto

Like it or not, Google and the Chinese government are stuck in a tense, long-term relationship, and can look forward to more high-stakes shadow-boxing in the netherworld of the world's most elaborate system of censorship. — Rebecca MacKinnon

Since I was a boy of five or six, I had it in my mind I would be a world boxing champion. — Joe Frazier

Much to be preferred to boxing are fencing and revolver-practice, judo and study of poisons. — Robert Aickman

Rhythm is everything in boxing. Every move you make starts with your heart, and that's in rhythm or you're in trouble. — Sugar Ray Robinson

What came in the end was only a small war and a quick victory; when the farmers and the gentlemen finally did coalesce in politics, they produced only the genial reforms of Progressivism; and the man on the white horse turned out to be just a graduate of the Harvard boxing squad, equipped with an immense bag of platitudes, and quite willing to play the democratic game. — Richard Hofstadter

I never get tired because it ain't energy that's being dispenced. It is GOD speaking through me. — Don King

You have to be super focused when you're boxing. After I've done a few rounds, I feel as if I can conquer the world. — Ciara

I could not tell anymore how much of the screaming came from my own mouth. I was borne up on the swell of it, I was the sound. We were all howling together, the poor and the quality, the boxing girl and the beast inside my breast. If she was a madwoman, then we were all of us with her, and I had never felt such savage elation, nor known that it existed. — Anna Freeman

Boxing will always be in my life. — Sugar Ray Leonard

As a professional athlete and someone who has spent almost his entire life in boxing, not a day goes by when I don't think about coming back, but I am retired, and after speaking to my family and following a great deal of introspection, I have decided to stay retired. — Oscar De La Hoya

Boxing is my real passion. I can go to ballet, theatre, movies, or other sporting events ... and nothing is like the fights to me. I'm excited by the visual beauty of it. A boxer can look so spectacular by doing a good job. — LeRoy Neiman

I'm just a seasonal guy. Basketball, football, baseball, boxing, golf. Give it to me all the time. — Jerry Ferrara

Rhythm is everything in boxing ... — Sugar Ray Robinson

I watched Ali, studied Ali, and I studied Sugar Ray Robinson. I watched them display showmanship. I watched them use pizzazz, personality, and charisma. I took things from them and borrowed things from them because boxing is entertainment. — Sugar Ray Leonard

The idea that boxing lends itself to cinema so well is because it's usually a morality play - good against evil, insecurity and triumph, fear strikes out, so the audience can really get drawn into the drama of it. Also, it was sensual and very primal. I think subliminaly we do two things - life is a fight, life is a struggle and we understand that from our early, early, early ancestors, and life is a race. — Sylvester Stallone

The entire existence of the NFL - and of football at any level, for all of that - rests on whether or not the game can keep fooling itself, and its paying fan base, that it is somehow superior to boxing and to the rest of our modern blood sports. — Charlie Pierce

Theater is like boxing - having the audience ringside. It's instant gratification. Or horrification. — Sylvester Stallone

The band broke into a cover of "Hungry Like the Wolf." I smiled up at mine. He was sexy even in soaking wet blue jeans. "Dance with me. — Lisa Kessler

All of my life had been spent in the shadow of apartheid. And when South Africa went through its extraordinary change in 1994, it was like having spent a lifetime in a boxing ring with an opponent and suddenly finding yourself in that boxing ring with nobody else and realising you've to take the gloves off and get out, and reinvent yourself. — Athol Fugard

I was a sportsman for years. I've always had a physical background. I've always had an interest in boxing and fighting. To get physical in films is a dream. I love it. — Jason Statham

I can drown a drink of water. I can kill a dead tree. Don't mess with Muhammad Ali. — Muhammad Ali

When she would walk, it was like rhythm. The guys' heads would bounce, but I wouldn't look because I was married. — Angelo Dundee

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. — Mike Tyson

When Don King's fighters lose their titles they come back fighting on the undercard for peanuts. King owns all the top heavyweights and we spar against each other but we get charged for it and that comes out of our purses. — Larry Holmes

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. — Dick Schaap

I've been fighting for more than 24 years and as I continue my ascendant career I want to be true to myself. I want to try to be the best role model I can be for kids who might look into boxing as a sport and a professional career. I have and will always be a proud Puerto Rican. I have always been and always will be a proud, gay man. — Orlando Cruz

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. — Muhammad Ali

By the time I retire, I will have fought the best. I will have made my money. Maybe I'll be a boxing commentator. I'll go back to school, definitely. I already have a plan. My life's set. I'll be on an island, married, playing golf in the sun. That will be my life. — Oscar De La Hoya

My husband and I went to Bald Head Island for our four-year anniversary. We spent the night in bed with champagne, tequila and Krispy Kreme doughnuts and watched a boxing match on Showtime. — Teri Polo

Mr. Cooper, have you looked in the mirror lately and seen the state of your nose? — Henry Cooper

I saw on HBO they were advertising a boxing match "It's a fight to the finish". That's a good place to end. — Mitch Hedberg

After you have seasoned your gloves with the blood, sweat and tears of your opponents, all else is anticlimactic. — Brian D'Ambrosio

It's like boxing a glacier. Enjoy that metaphor, by the way, because your grandchildren will have no idea what a glacier is. — Stephen Colbert

The punches you miss are the ones that wear you out. - Boxing trainer Angelo Dundee — Benjamin Graham

Even while modeling, I was still practicing kung fu and boxing as sports. — Djimon Hounsou

The stage is my territory, my boxing ring. That's where I'm free. — Mika.

Mental strength is really important because you either win or lose in your mind. And I'm not solely talking about sporting matches, boxing events - anything you do, you do it first with your mental strength. And you can actually train and develop it, and I am responsible for what I'm saying because I have experience with that. — Wladimir Klitschko

I took high school very casually. There was Teen Town, chess, tennis, boxing, running. Lots of things going on. — Robert Mundell

Look at my body. Does it look like I sue steroids? — James Toney

Boxing has been in my blood since I can remember. It comes naturally to me, and I've enjoyed it ever since I started, at the age of six. — Oscar De La Hoya

As a West Side kid fooling around with boxing gloves, I had been, for some reason of temperament, more interested in dodging a blow than in striking one. — Gene Tunney