A fighter in his prime needs to stay active. A fighter, who doesn't have certainty when he's going to fight again, it's hard for him to stay mentally ready.
As a fighter pilot I know from my own experiences how decisive surprise and luck can be for success, which in the long run comes only to the one who combines daring with cool thinking.
One thing I see in a lot of coaches is they try to live through the fighter. You can't live through the fighter. You gotta allow the fighter to be the fighter, and do what he do, and you just try to guide him. Why should I have to live through a fighter, when I went from eating out of a trashcan to being eight-time world champion? I stood in the limelight and did what I had to do as a fighter. I've been where that fighter is trying to go.
The way I lived my life, I truly wasn't an active resistance fighter.
I'm always fighter. I'm always fighter first. I voice that opinion, which sometimes gets me in trouble, but as long as you're true to yourself, you're going to be all right.
I'm going to stay active as long as I can politically, and with the Carter Center primarily, and if I'm able mentally and physically, will continue to be quite active.
Leaving active duty was so I could become the best fighter in the world at my weight class.
Anyone who is friends with a fighter or lives with a fighter, you know that a fighter cutting weight is on edge.
To use a fighter as a fighter-bomber when the strength of the fighter arm is inadequate to achieve air superiority is putting the cart before the horse.
There are rules that say 'If a fighter gets old, when a fighter slows down, when a fighter stops looking the same, then he can never come back.' I don't like that.
Fact is, the desperate desire to be cool has skewed our culture toward nihilism, carelessness, and ineptitude. It is now cool to be an idiot. A jackass. It's cool to be a failure, as long as your failure is the basis for a reality show.
I want to keep active, so when they called me to fight Nate Diaz, I agreed because I wanted to stay active. I got a little surprised because he was out so long, but he's a tough opponent.
It's cool to stay active and keep my body going.
Canelo Alvarez is a very good fighter. I believe he's the best 160 fighter in the world. I don't think there's a fighter at 160 who can beat him.
I don't think that boxing historians have been able to find a case in which a great fighter, or a fighter presumed to be a great fighter, came to such an ignominious end.
Sometimes at 155 pounds I was the smaller fighter, at 145 pounds I am more often the bigger fighter, and the taller fighter.