Boxing on Long Island - there is history there. It's been a while since Buddy McGirt and Gerry Cooney, but you know, we are in kind of a resurgence now. We are putting our show there constantly - Star Boxing shows at the Paramount have drawn big crowds over the years and there is a lot of up and coming talent there now. You see more and more gyms with competitive professional fighters.
But the great thing about shows now is since we've been doing (Comedy Death Ray), they have lightened up on their booking policies a bit more and are booking somebody who isn't famous and who hasn't been around ten years. It's great to see people who've done our show - the first big show they've ever done - now they can play around town.
When I was a kid, I did martial arts because boxing wasn't really available on Long Island. I think now kids are able to begin boxing earlier. So it's great and whatever can promote the sport on a whole is a good thing. And if we can do it on Long Island, where I am from, it's a beautiful thing.
After 14 years in boxing, the best decision I could have made was to take the last year off. My mind was not in boxing, but since I got here with Freddie, everything is working perfectly again. Boxing is all I know. Boxing is my life. Through boxing, I raised my family and I work to provide the best future for them. They are the reason I love boxing.
In the 1930s, in boxing, to be the heavyweight champion of the world was really, really big, people wanted to see the toughest guys. But what I've figured out now, in the '50s, '60s, boxing started to become more entertainment than sport.
Podcasting - it's a huge, huge thing now. 'The Fighter and the Kid' and the 'Big Brown Breakdown' reaches more people than a lot of shows on networks right now as far as television goes. It's such a loyal fan base, and I know my boxing. I'm really into it. I'm really honored to be a part of something like this. I feel like a glitch in 'The Matrix.'
They don't show Olympic boxing on TV in prime time. They haven't done that since 1988. In 1992, they showed one: Oscar De La Hoya. In 1996, they didn't show it. In 2000, they didn't show it. In 2004, they didn't show it. In 2008, they did not even mention boxing at all. You would think the United States didn't have a boxing team in 2008.
To be the first Puerto Rican to win a world title in four divisions would be an achievement. Gomez, Benitez, there have been a lot of good fighters from Puerto Rico before me. When I started boxing, Tito Trinidad was our big star.
I feel like I've been the star of my own show for a while now. I was always putting on shows as a kid, and obviously, my household was really creative.
There's such a big buzz around boxing at the moment. Everything's happening and there's so much building up with a lot of young talent coming through.
I made an instant connection with boxing right away. Boxing became such a part of me. I ate boxing, I slept boxing, I lived boxing. Boxing was a way of expressing myself because I was not that outspoken.
This is not a sport for me - I live boxing. I've been boxing since I was seven years old.
Boxing is the sweet science. So if you want to begin in the grass roots of boxing where women are on the same level as guys, you are talking hundreds of years. Men have been boxing everyday all day for a hundred years. So it will take some time. You will need to bring more young girls into the gym starting at 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. And it would have to be 100,000 of them.
MMA keeps growing and now I think it's more popular than professional boxing.
I can quit boxing now and practically go into any kind of business and I'll be successful just as well as I was in boxing.
Where most kids play stickball and hockey, I'd walk down the streets with two sets of boxing gloves and knock on my friend's door and see if he wanted to box. There were boxing gyms on every corner.
My daughter, who is 7 years old - I have no idea where she learned this - she made a video where she's beat-boxing. We have no idea where the beat-boxing came from, but all of a sudden, there it was. Now we're launched into lyric sheets for every single song that is current. They're all over our house.