I've been fighting professionally since I was 18, and I've been doing three or four fights a year, just doing camp after camp.
Basketball Without Borders is a leadership camp that takes basketball to different places around the world, to Africa, Europe, America and Asia. It's a camp that brings players from different parts of the continent to one city that's been assigned as the host city. We've been going to a different city every year.
Most veterans detested training camp, but not me. I loved having a dorm room and a little fridge with snacks, and I looked forward to goofing around in the meetings.
I go to practice every day. I really don't have a training camp. In the boxing world, and that's where that came from, almost every time a guy would get out of the ring and he wouldn't break a sweat again until he went to his next training camp. He would do absolutely nothing until he started training for the next fight.
I am originally from Florida. So Thanksgiving was always something I really looked forward to, because I got to travel back home every year and see everyone all at once, around one big happy table.
Most players who've been around any length of time think of training camp as a time of hard work, frustration and monotony. But I can honestly say I look forward to it.
It really has been just take it one day a time, one fight at a time, one training camp at a time, one year at a time.
My training has always been really tough. I've always worked hard. I've always been very committed to my training and focused on my workout.
I always end up saying, whether it being my rookie year, not playing as many games as I should have with the new coaching and whatnot, and then my injury and my suspension, I feel like every year, it's always been something, you know what I mean?
I was always looking to be entertained. We lead such full lives and a lot of us don't lead very pleasant lives and don't like what we do... My dad worked his whole life as a salesman and that wasn't what he really wanted to do. He looked forward to two weeks vacation every year and he used to say to me, 'Whatever you do, make sure you do something you really like so you don't just have your vacation to look forward to.' And I love movies.
I treat every camp the same. Every fight since my debut has always been a must-win.
It's something that I do every year - every Ramadan to be exact - taking an 18-hour flight back home to Malaysia from Los Angeles. I'm born and raised in Malaysia, and Ramadan and Eid has always been my favorite time of the year.
I've trained all my life. I've always been one who enjoys training so it's not something that I think I can just stop doing. It might not be as regular but I want to keep training.
I came to my first Colts training camp in July of 1950, and it was murder, absolute murder. We had a coach named Clem Crow who must have been nuts. You got to remember that I'd been a Marine, had gone through basic training and spent 26 months in the Pacific during WWII, but the Marine drill instructors had nothing on Clem.
[Ruslan] Provodnikov has a totally different style than Manny Pacquiao and that's what training camp is all about and that's why I stay in shape year round, so I can work on strategy in camp instead of getting in shape.
Training has always been a hobby, and my whole life has revolved around training. It's something I truly love doing. I wanna do what I wanna do and this is something I wrestled with, because I have to make many sacrifices to do what I wanna do.