Top 20 Roy Jones Jr. Quotes

I started talking about retiring in 1997. This is a brutal game, and 25 years of it ain’t good for your health. After I get past Tarver on Saturday, give me Klitschko or Tyson. Otherwise, I’m outta here.

The more irrational you make your opponent, the more control you have over him in the ring.

You can’t pretend there has ever been anyone come close to doing what I did. Nobody you could name could touch me, and I’m talking about nobody who’s around now, nobody who was around in my prime, and nobody who was around any time you can mention outta your mouth.

I’m pretty good at video games, but I’m the champ when it comes to pinball, and that’s just because it’s old-fashion like I am. I can’t get enough of pinball.

Andre Ward got the chance to fight Sergey Kovalev twice. Triple G and Canelo are fighting again. People are getting paid to play king of the hill again.

They’ve made it a felon to drive from Florida to Louisiana with any fighting birds, so I’ve had to get rid of most of my chickens. I only got about a hundred left now, which I just keep for colour and breeding. I love those birds as much as anything.

British fans are the best, and we are seeing that. They love the sport of boxing. They follow, they travel, they love their fighters. They will go anywhere in the world to support you. They support better than any other country I’ve seen to this day.

If God truly wanted me to stop, all He’d have to do is have one doctor at the Mayo Clinic find something wrong with my brain. Just one little CAT scan showing any sign of trauma or damage, and I’d be done.

I don’t know what tomorrow holds. None of us do. We got to wait and see what God has planned.

Some of those guys show a lot of promise, especially Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder. Even the kid Joseph Parker, who Joshua is about to fight, shows a lot of promise. I’m looking forward to some really exciting fights in the heavyweight division to come.

I had more energy at 25 and did more jiving around. People got to understand that when you’re not so interested in something, you’re not gonna do it to the best of your ability. I used to get excited working the crowd, but no more.

I got real bored in ’96. Wasn’t nobody to fight. Nothing to look forward to. That’s when I started playing basketball again. Had I not started playing basketball, my boxing career would have failed. But I went from a sport where nobody could touch me to another where I couldn’t touch nobody.

With me, I come in the ring and start thinking right away. My thought process is just to put a guy down. I’m like a technician and learn to break it all down – from head to toe.

I’ve tried to stick with the same people from when my career started to today. The more people you add around you, the more distractions you have, and that’s the last thing I need.

I never stop. I’ll never truly retire, because my mind is always on go.

In my prime, I was the ruler. Simple as that. I understand there’s a lot of great fighters who’ve followed me already since I was the champ – and I hope there’s another who comes along does even better because want to see that – but I haven’t seen anyone do what I did yet.

Every day, it was the same: school, homework, farm work, training. Getting hurt or dying might’ve been better than the life I was living.

I always had a fetish for fighting big peoples. My dad put me in the ring with much bigger guys. In my first fight, I gave the guy a 14-pound advantage.

Fishing keeps you alive, gives you time away – to enjoy God, the creations that He made. Because God made you.

Boxing has been my life, and it is my life. I’ve enjoyed every moment of it.