A Quote by Mikey Garcia

It came like a natural thing for me, and I liked it. That's how my amateur career started. But again, no interest in a future in boxing. I just thought it was like a little pastime, something to do.
When I started training to fight, it was more out of boredom than anything. I was looking for more things to do. I started with boxing, and my coaches told me I had a lot of potential and that I should consider making it a career. I was like, 'Whatever.' I was just 15 at the time, and I never imagined something like that.
I don't want to be little again. But at the same time I do. I want to be me like I was then, and me as I am now, and me like I'll be in the future. I want to be me and nothing but me. I want to be crazy as the moon, wild as the wind and still as the earth. I want to be every single thing it's possible to be. I'm growing and I don't know how to grow. I'm living but I haven't started living yet.
I started boxing when I was eight. Me and my brother Rafael started boxing in amateur tournaments when I was 13. My father was an ex-pro boxer.
What am I gonna do to be successful and provide for my family? I was like, I want to play basketball, I love basketball, but I'm too short. I'm not gonna cooperate in school... Boxing. I always found boxing, it always came back to boxing, boxing, boxing. Boxing, this is it, this is gonna be the thing gonna take me over the the top.
I've always just felt like an outsider. I've always been made fun of in school ever since kindergarten. For me, when I started singing, that's when I started making "friends,". That's when people started taking an interest in me. That was the thing that made me likable, I guess. Maybe even lovable! I think that's really why I'm so hellbent on doing this as a career is because those are the moments where I felt at my most confident.
During my boxing career, you did not see the real Muhammad Ali. You just saw a little boxing and a little showmanship. It was after I retired from boxing that my true work began.
I had to start boxing because I missed working on something and learning and I guess there's a little more aggression in boxing. I couldn't really get that side of me out, but I used to be able to by hitting a volleyball. That's why I started boxing.
One day, it hit me that music is my calling. I just started playing and writing music. How, I don't know. I just started doing it, and then this big voice came out of my mouth. And it felt like I was releasing something.
I've got a yoga instructor and a trainer. I just started a heavy-bag class, which is like boxing and cardio, and I salsa dance with my girlfriends. I try to do something every day. Continually exercising is natural for us.
I guess I don't really know any other way to do it, it just feels like the natural way to do things for me. Like - if I'm writing a song - it has to have some sort of value. Or it only has some kind of value to me, if it's something really personal. It has to mean something to me. I guess it is a little uncomfortable, or it's a little embarrassing sometimes, to know that stuff that honest is out there. But, when I hand off the thing, when it's totally done and mastered and sent, I kinda feel like it doesn't belong to me anymore.
I started off and I didn't have the advantage like other fighters of having an amateur career to grow and learn and make mistakes. Unfortunately, I spent the early years of my professional career doing that, and I feel like I've learned from all those mistakes.
I never want to feel complacent, and I had started to, a little bit. I had started to feel like "I have this thing I can do, it's worked a few times," but not only does that get boring, but you feel stagnant and unproductive. So I was feeling a lack of creativity and motivation, so I started making a more conscious choice to grow personally. It wasn't even an image-conscious thing, like, "I don't want people to think this way about me." It was really just a way to keep myself energized and feel excited about this thing I love doing. Like I went to couples therapy or something.
I'm very unpopular for my dislike of this food, but I've never liked avocado. Everyone gives me so much flack for it because they tell me how healthy it is for me, how delicious it is. I don't like it, but it's not for lack of trying. I tried to like it, and it's just not my thing.
I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing--for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches, nothing determined, again the bell and again and you and your opponent so evenly matched it's impossible not to see that your opponent is you.... Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.
It's just kind of ironic with how I came into the NBA with all the expectations. You would've thought coming in the way I did that my career would last long. You'd think I'd have my more peak years in the beginning or middle. Mine just came a little later.
For the majority of my amateur boxing career, I was the underdog weirdly enough and that served me well.
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