I always appreciated my dad coming outside and playing with us - or my mom - and being a part of the game we were playing or refereeing it or just being outside. That was fun for us, and it was very encouraging.
I'm very competitive. I remember being 4 years old trying to out-chug my dad in a milk-chugging contest. It's been in my blood.
My dad was my swim coach growing up, and I tried to get kicked out of practice every day. I was a little devil kid.
I didn't play a great deal of sport in primary school. It was not until I went away to boarding school in Sussex that I really got into sport.
When you speak to a lot of kids, as I've done over the years, you know what to say, keep them laughing, good illustrations and learn to read.
Oh, there's nothing more dangerous in life at getting hurt at than love itself. People are hurt in love affairs and never recover, more than a boxing match.
Joe Frazier's life didn't start with Ali. I was a Golden Gloves champ. Gold medal in Tokyo '64. Heavyweight champion of the world long before I fought Ali in the Garden.
I loved competing and winning and also wanted to continue my career for the fans, knowing they were there for me and enjoyed watching me fight.
Det. Bill Mitchell: [to Keith Frazier] If this goes down wrong, they're gonna dump this whole mess in your lap.
[from trailer] Det. Bill Mitchell: You gotta be crazy to go in there. Keith Frazier: Like a fox.
I think I already proved that I wasn't just fighting for the money, because I fought as an amateur. I fought 90 fights for free.
You've got to have a focus. You just fight for money, you get hurt. You focus on the title, you'll just naturally make money doing it.
Bob Arum and Don King can do their thing but if I fought for those guys and they put the money up like they are supposed to then I don't have a problem.
You know, everybody has a slogan, and once you beat people over the head with it so much, then that's what you'll eventually be called once you retire from the sport or whatever.
I'd have to say losing the title to Ali in '74 was the lowest moment in sports for me. It was the most devastating thing in my boxing career, and it still hurts to this day.
Boxing's a poor man's sport. We can't afford to play golf or tennis. It is what it is. It's kept so many kids off the street. It kept me off the street.
When you're representing a sport, people are more likely to judge and comment as, unlike other fields, sport permits every viewer to participate to a certain level.
I had ridiculous amounts of energy. Mom's like, you're driving me crazy - do you want to try gymnastics? From the moment I started it, I loved it and it kind of was like storybook from there.
If anyone has followed my career, they know that there's been a lot of obstacles and a lot of ups and down through my career. But day in and day out, and in the square circle, I went out there and always did my best.
I fought a boxer who everybody said I couldn't beat - Sugar Ray Leonard. They said he was faster than me. That he was the best of the best. And I beat him.
When I was a kid in Houston, we were so poor we couldn't afford the last 2 letters, so we called ourselves po'.
