“Boxing is the embodiment of who I am, but beyond that, this is a journey of the self, and my obsession to get the most from this short life.”

There’s this idea that because I’m a heavyweight, I’m not supposed to be in condition, that I should take advantage of the fact that I can eat. But I train and eat well, and it shows when I step on the scales.

I want it all: I want the attention and live for the glory nights.

There’s so much pressure on becoming the next Muhammad Ali or Mike Tyson, and if you don’t achieve that in boxing, you’re nothing.

I’ll get seven hours sleep a night, but after breakfast, I’ll have an hour just resting, to recover. In Spain they all have siestas, even businessmen.

Don’t worry about the title. Worry about what you’ve got to do today, tomorrow, the next day, and that title will be waiting for you.

Boxing’s a sport that gives you licence to act like an idiot, I think.

People have built me up to be untouchable, unbeatable, invincible, and I’m not that. I am a man, and I am a winner, but that can change in a second.

When you are caught with a big shot, you don’t really feel it. It’s like being in a car crash, and maybe your arm has been ripped off… it is only when you look down at it that you realise it has happened.

I know every fight could be my last fight, and if that happens, that’s not just a health issue, but I’ll be knocked off that king’s stool.

No matter how big and strong you are even Tyson said he was scared as hell walking to the ring. Everyone feels the pressure.

I still feel I am that 14-year-old kid, hungry and trying to find a way through life. That’s what I’m trying to develop, trying to be good at something through boxing. But I feel like that young kid who’s trying and trying.

The way I meditate is by being organised. I can get real Zen if I go home and tidy the front room.

I didn’t make the most of school, but boxing has given me discipline.

Prayer is a form of meditation, isn’t it? It’s laws of attraction: whatever you put out into the universe is what it receives. It’s just kind of putting your thoughts out into the universe.

Wherever you get to is better than where you started. To stay on the road is a massive achievement.

Cardio is a nice way to start the morning, man. Whether you sit on the bike for half an hour or throw on two jumpers and just sweat, it’s good to get up, get the body active, put on your headphones, and just pedal away.

Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.

I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn’t know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen.

You know, he’s a little bit sometimes outside the box, but you’ve got to let him be who he is.

It bothers me that the average fan, the average sportswriter for that matter, pays so much attention to what’s in a box score.

A box score does not properly represent the most important thing – team play. It shows some guy scoring 27 points, but it doesn’t show that my 27-point man let his guy score 30.

Often life is a frantic avoidance of the truth.

My friends are a crayola box. They highlight different colors of my being, representing different aspects of my personalty, I’ve noticed.

Although it is tempting to imagine an ancient era innocent of biochemical weaponry, in fact this Pandora’s box of horrors was opened thousands of years ago.