It would be hard to throw a punch to someone who wasn't a boxer, who wasn't in the ring, and who didn't have on a pair of boxing gloves and who hadn't been training.
I wanted to be champ of the world, but I kept hoping something would happen to Frazier. I didn't want to fight him. Nobody wanted to fight Joe Frazier.
I want to thank America. You opened your heart so I could enter. Thank you everybody who lives in the United States, who saw me grow into becoming a world champion.
I am not going to become crazy in the ring, because I am already crazy. And I am not going to die in the ring. I am going to die in bed as an old man.
It took me nine years to get through the fourth grade. When I got into television commercials, I had to take a crash course in reading. I was 32 years old, and I couldn't read the cue cards.
I asked my kids, 'Do you know what Papa used to do.' They said, 'You were a boxer, you won the Olympics!' And that's what they know.
I went through real darkness, but the ring was my light. That was the one place I felt safe. I could control what happened in the ring. My heart turned icy.
People try to live vicariously through fighters, but it's one-on-one; it's primal. There's no other feeling like it. The problem for me was accepting it - that nothing compares to being champ.
Ali was a guy that had a lot of discipline. If you hung around him, you'd be able to get some of that discipline that he had. And I learned from that. He was a sweet man.
Fighters today are much bigger, stronger and quicker and not only that but referees, judges and doctors back then were very strict and if your head got busted up the fight would be stopped.
I have a lot of friends and fans in Canada and as a matter of fact I met a fan from there that came down to my office. It was nice and we took pictures and had a nice talk.
I would think about the outcome. Visualize sometimes. Because it never comes out the way you want it to. Fight the way I know how to fight. Whatever comes up, comes up.
The likes of Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Tommy Hearns were true champions. There were some incredible fights between us, and I was happy to give them all an opportunity to fight me.
No I don't miss fighting, I still got my wits about me and there are a lot of people who do it and get beat up, and I don't want to be one of them, I have children to raise.
I never lost a fight because I wasn't in shape or because I wasn't ready. I lost because I was either beaten by a man better than me, or it wasn't my night.
I love the pigeons. I just raise them, period, and feed them. Pigeons go away, and they always come back. You get a touch of freedom, and then they are free to come back to you. I love the idea of pigeons.
What helped me was I had people around me to remind me to help my country even when it did me wrong, have respect for my people, my family, my nation and mankind.
I was not from a middle-class family at all. I did not have middle-class possessions and what have you. But I had middle-class parents who gave me what was needed to survive in society.
My team members are Hector Soto, who is a boxing promoter and Vice-president of Miguel Cotto Promotions. He runs all my business. He was the person that my father left in charge of it all. Bryan Perez is my right-hand man.
I get people to this day - I won my title 25 years ago - saying how wonderful a time they had during that dark period in our history when they came to watch me fight.
I never met a person as determined as my mother. From working hard for six kids to just trying to keep the household down or maintain my father's discipline, my dad, I'm so much like my father too. My father was so introverted, quiet, shy, nice. I go...
