Michael Roberts is a great rider and a great tactician; he was always using his brain in a race. His determination to become champion jockey was unswerving. He worked night and day, day and night to do it. You must have tunnel vision to become champion jockey: you must almost block everything else out, and he did that perfectly.
When you start boxing when you're 7 years old, that's your dream, to become world champion, and after that you want to become something bigger than world champion.
There are plenty of massive fights out there for me, I know that, but the goals always going to become world champion.
You work for years and years to make the Olympics, then something goes wrong and it's all gone. But that doesn't mean you can't still make your mark in another way. Losing in the Olympic Trials made me that much hungrier to become a world champion as a pro.
I sat in a theater when I was 11 years old and watched 'The Empire Strikes Back' from 10 in the morning until 10 at night the day it came out.
The Jens Pulver fight was one that was on a massive level: I was a world champion fighting a former world champion, and a guy that I looked up to. We had a great fight.
To win the four major title belts, to be the unbeaten champion and 10 years a champion - it's amazing. I'm so proud.
The mission I set out on in the beginning - to become heavyweight champion of the world, undisputed, lineal champion - you could say that mission is complete.
I knew something was wrong that day, he made the mistakes [Pablo Escobar] had never committed throughout the last 10 years as the most wanted man in the world in one day. He never used the phone, he only did the day he was killed.
Seven years is a long time, and seven years of fighting the best guys in the best organization in the world, the biggest organization in the world, it hardens you. You don't stay seven years without evolving. It doesn't happen.
Maybe I wish I could be out there on the big occasions playing like I did at my peak, but I certainly don't miss the six and seven hours a day practice that went hand in hand with being world champion in the nineties - or losing to guys knowing that it would never have happened when I was at my best.
At the end of the day, I could go back to getting sixth or seventh place and being a mediocre skater, or I could be a champion. I want to be a champion.
All my fans, especially my Latino fans and Nicaraguan fans, I promise you I will become world champion. After I become world champion Piccirillo can go back to Italy and make pizza or pasta or whatever it is he does over there.
To become a world champion, to defeat Anderson Silva, to accomplish my goal in one night, it was a super surreal feeling.
After my debut, I had to struggle for seven years to establish myself in the industry.
To become a champion, you must first think like a champion, and the best way to think like a champion is start talking like a champion. So start talking today like the champion you could be, and your thoughts and actions will follow.