Great Boxing Quotes

#1. I always wanted to play a boxer because some of my favorite films, as a boy, were those great boxing movies, like 'Raging Bull', 'Rocky', 'The Set Up', 'Fat City and Hard Times'. I just loved those films.

Holt McCallany

#2. I had always wanted to play a boxer, all of my life. I grew up watching great boxing films.

Holt McCallany

#3. Fighting is dancing. Look at a great boxing match, and it's a dancing.

David Lyons

#4. Joe Louis was one of my closest friends ... I'm a great boxing fan. I used to go to the American Legion Stadium in Hollywood, every Friday night for 15 years. Down the aisle would come Lupe Velez, Johnny Weismuller, Mae West. All at ringside.

Mickey Rooney

#5. Boxing is a great way to vent. I don't know if there is a better way, I think for women too. There is something so primal about it and it's the best exercise in the world, even if you don't ever get in the ring.

Sylvester Stallone

#6. Against the odd's, I have persevered, I am the living attestation of the American dream. I am the extolment of this great nation. I have coffee and cocktails with presidents and dictators. I'm an international figure, a citizen of the world. I've made it.

Don King

#7. I said I was the greatest, not the smartest.

Muhammad Ali

#8. There are a lot of things and in order to be at the top and maintain your focus you have to have something that motivates you. For me, it was what I perceived as a lack of respect from the boxing world as well as the media, which made me want to work so hard and be great.

Marvin Hagler

#9. The nearest I have ever seen to the great Willie Pep

Angelo Dundee

#10. People tell me it was a great left hook, but I wouldn't know. I never saw it

Gene Fullmer

#11. I think Mike Gibbons was probably the greatest boxer that ever put a glove on. They called him The Wizard, The Phantom of the ring and he was that. I boxed with Mike about ten years and I never really hit him a hard punch during the time. Repeating again, Mike was one of the great boxers of the age.

Tommy Gibbons

#12. I'm too fast. I'm too smart. I'm too pretty.

Muhammad Ali

#13. You don't have to be in a boxing ring to be a great fighter. As long as you are true to yourself, you will succeed in your fight for that in which you believe.

Muhammad Ali

#14. I'm a boxing junkie, a serial-killer junkie, and a classical guitar junkie. All of these guys are great, poetic references.

Mark Kozelek

#15. Boxing has been great for me because it's, like, my new sport, so it's something that I can get better at.

Gigi Hadid

#16. The show was bad, but I was great

Muhammad Ali

#17. I'm the best promoter in the world because I haven't taken a day off work since I left the penitentiary, and because I have read all the great philosophers like St. Thomas Aquinine.

Don King

#18. I start a boxing movie and that's kind of something I've been able to get to the gym for. It's great anytime you can parallel a skill that your character has. I just think it makes it even more rewarding.

Miles Teller

#19. I am the great test! a blackened shadow-boxing colossus jabjabbered, pounding his gloves against the wall. The heavyweight will be quillweight. Bantamweight, even. Ain't nobody can dethrone me, beyond my ken! he boasted,* sidling up to his shadow.


*Mad Ali?:

Julian Rios

#20. Boxing changed my life. It's like a drug; you can't believe how great it is! Let me tell you something, you hit somebody on the chin, the guy goes down, the crowd roars ... Wow! You really feel something!

Tony Danza

#21. My main objective is to be professional but to kill him.

Mike Tyson

#22. As a professional athlete and someone who has spent almost his entire life in boxing, not a day goes by when I don't think about coming back, but I am retired, and after speaking to my family and following a great deal of introspection, I have decided to stay retired.

Oscar De La Hoya

#23. I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong,

Muhammad Ali

#24. Maybe I was great in the ring, but outside of boxing, I'm just a brother like other people. I want to live a good life, serve God, help everybody I can. And one more thing. I'm still gonna find out who stole my bike when I was 12 years old in Louisville and I'm gonna whup him. That was a good bike.

Muhammad Ali

#25. My dad just wanted me to find something to do to keep me out of trouble. Boxing was the great escape.

Diego Corrales

#26. Man, I've been to jail. It was hell in there, but I survived, If they put me back, I'll come out again. I'm one of the world's great survivors. I'll always survive because I've got the right combination of wit, grit and bullshit.

Don King

#27. I'm a big fan of spinning and yoga. To strengthen my core, kick-boxing is really effective. The resistance tones everything, and it's a great stress reliever.

Katrina Bowden

#28. All my wives were great housekeepers. After every divorce, they kept the house.

Willie Pep

#29. Boxing great Mike Tyson said "a happy fighter is a dangerous fighter." I think he's right.

Ronda Rousey

#30. I liked that title. I didn't want to lose it to anybody, but if I had to lose it, I'm glad I lost it to you. You're a good fighter and gonna be a great champ.

Jersey Joe Walcott

#31. It's been like that forever. We got spoiled by Joe Louis, by Rocky Marciano. Muhammad ruined us for everybody. He was great outside [the ring]; he was great inside. We got so accustomed to it we thought we deserved it.

Angelo Dundee

#32. I want to be remembered as a great athlete. As a boxing champion.

Idi Amin

#33. When you're a great finisher, you'll become popular. Joe Louis was a great finisher.

Mike Tyson

#34. I have been so great in boxing they had to create an image like Rocky, a white image on the screen, to counteract my image in the ring. America has to have its white images, no matter where it gets them. Jesus, Wonder Woman, Tarzan and Rocky.

Muhammad Ali

#35. That's okay, I'm still the Greatest.

Muhammad Ali

#36. 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.

Larry Merchant

#37. Boxing is a great exercise ... as long as you can yell "cut" whenever you want to.

Sylvester Stallone