there's a lot of dangerous sports. You know, my opinion, football is the most dangerous sport there is. After that I'll give it to probably boxing. Then there's some other extreme sports out there, motocross where you're really risking your neck every time you go out there and do it.
I don't actually think boxing is a particularly dangerous sport, I wouldn't even put it in the top ten of dangerous sports, but that's only if you take it seriously. Whenever I stepped into the ring I was well hydrated, I was at the right weight and I was prepared. It wasn't a dangerous sport for me.
Surely, sport is not fundamentally about the safety of athletes. If it were, we'd probably have to ban professional football, right after boxing.
I submit that tennis is the most beautiful sport there is, and also the most demanding....Basketball comes close, but it's a team sport and lacks tennis's primal mano a mano intensity. Boxing might come close- at least at the lighter weight divisions- but the actual physical damage the fighters inflict on each other makes it too concretely brutal to be really beautiful- a level of abstraction and formality (i.e., play) is necessary for a sport to possess true metaphysical beauty (in my opinion).
People shy away from it [MMA] because they think it's a brutal, brutal sport, and I've said, 'Guys, MMA is safer than football and boxing,... And people tell me they don't believe it. Am I not the most credible person to give you the answer to that?
Boxing is a dangerous, cruel sport. I love the sport, but I don't want to see my kids in the ring, potentially being hurt, with me not being able to do nothing to help them.
Every fighter has a duty to boxing to not bring themselves or the sport into disrepute by foul language or behaviour so that boxing can be seen as a gentleman's sport.
You do a deal - business deal, real estate deal, stock deal - protect yourself at all times. I got that from boxing. That's from A to Z: that covers everything in life. And it started when I heard it in the ring. They don't say that in basketball or football or any other sport that I know of but boxing.
Boxing is an American sport - a 'so-called sport' to many - in which images of incalculable beauty and violence, desperation and ingenuity, are routinely entwined; the sport that evokes the most extreme reactions - loathing, revulsion, righteous indigation; a fierce and often inexplicable loyalty.
In football what counts is team spirit. It isn't an individual sport like boxing or tennis.
Boxing is not like any other sport, you have to weigh up the risk and reward. Things like playing football, tennis, you might be three sets to love down, but boxing you're going to the hospital on a stretcher and you know potentially you are going to get an injury you can't walk away from.
I like rugby - I watch it from time to time. It's basically football without pads but probably a little bit more dangerous than football. You've got to be a lot tougher in that sport - but I definitely like watching rugby and watching those guys knock each other around. It looks like a fun sport.
I was always hugely into sport before I started boxing. I played rugby, football, cricket, athletics, swimming.
Freediving can be extremely dangerous. It's got an incredibly high fatality rate outside of competition. But there's never been a fatality in competition. In terms of spear fishing and people who train by themselves, it's the second most dangerous sport in the world after base jumping. If you black out by yourself, you drown.
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.
Boxing is the more dangerous activity from the rugby player's and the general public's point of view, but to me rugby is far more dangerous so I would prefer my sons to box. I love my children too much and do not want to watch them getting hurt. This is in no way intended as a criticism of rugby, which I consider to be a fantastic sport.