Boxing is filled with immortal quotes that die-hards will always remember without skipping a beat.
Sometimes they are inspirational and insightful, and sometimes just plain funny. Boxing Social’s Matt Bozeat has listed the top 10 quotes from boxing history and it goes as follows.
“It’s easy to do anything in victory. It’s in defeat that a man reveals himself.”
FLOYD PATTERSON
“Everyone suffers defeats and disappointments in life. But in boxing, it happens in front of thousands and it’s online for millions to see. You have to live with it forever. The worst thing is taking a physical beating from a man in public. It’s not like losing a game of tennis.”
ANDY LEE
“Boxing is a contest of will and skill, with the will generally overcoming the skill, unless the skill of one man is much greater than the skill of the other.”
Trainer CUS D’AMATO
“Fighters struggle when they aren’t in the limelight no more and things are going badly for them. They finish boxing and the promoters tell them they should have saved their money. Yeah, I should have saved it, but sometimes we aren’t paid enough and every ha-ra-ra that’s around us thinks: ‘I wanna be around him because he’s on top of the world.’ But, man, when it falls down around you, it’s just you by yourself.”
IRAN BARKLEY
“Life is the best left hooker I ever saw, although some say it was Charlie White of Chicago.”
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
“When I retire I want to get very, very fat just once. I’m gonna stay up late and inhale the fumes of good jazz in nice, smoky nightclubs with good jazz combos. I’m gonna sleep late in the mornings and never run again. I’ll burn all my training clothes and hang my gloves way up out of reach.
My wife will hide my dusty scrapbooks and my picture albums and I’ll have to walk down to the gym every day and shoot the bull with the other old timers, as I watch the kids and think to myself that I could’ve beaten all of them in my time. That’s an old fighter’s privilege.”
ARCHIE MOORE
“I know fighters don’t age gracefully. I know fighters get hurt. But I also know in my heart, I gotta fight. At least one more time. Why ? I’ll tell you why: Love.”
PAULIE MALIGNAGGI
“I would go to school and just think about making no mistakes in the gym that night. If I didn’t I would sleep well. I knew how to tie him up in a certain way, take certain risks, wear them down and I know when they are fatiguing. When I get in the ring I know what it is going to take.”
FLOYD MAYWEATHER Jr.
“Well it was like this, I zigged when I should have zagged.”
JACK ROPER after being blasted out inside a round by Joe Louis in April, 1939.
“I am a man of destiny. I’m gonna win the heavyweight championship of the world, earn a million dollars and get me a chauffeur-driven, tomato-red Cadillac with built-in hi-fi, television and telephones. I’m gonna make the world sit up and take notice and say, ‘Wow, this kid is the greatest.’”
CASSIUS CLAY after winning gold at the 1960 Olympics in Rome.
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