“I am going in there to win this fight. I don’t think people are taking me seriously. I’m gonna surprise a lot of people. This guy helped two people make history.”

The middleweight division is one of the most exciting divisions in the sport. Fighters can punch like heavyweights and have the speed of the lightweights. You have the best of world worlds.

The media here know that there’s the possibility that I can pull this off. I’m confident. Confidence comes with work. When you prepare yourself and you know you’re going into combat with all of your bullets, you have the confidence to go into battle.

I always not only want push the envelope in my career but I also have an itch for going against the grain.

Boxers are resilitant guys. We know how to take of a big punch that hits us, we know how to survive. Oscar is a survivor, he’s gonna be back bigger and stronger.

The streets was basically my parents.

Understand that I’m at my best when it comes to proving a point, not only to show that I’m a better fighter and a better athlete at 40½ years old, but I’m at my best when I know I’ve got to beat the system again.

I’m 100 percent clean. I’m doing this off of nuts and bananas.

The only thing I can do is be right about what I say. Because I know I’m being watched. I understand what I’m facing. All I can do is put the work behind it.

I like Sergio Martinez. I think he’s strong, he’s gritty, he’s got plenty of heart, he’s not the fanciest guy you might have seen in boxing but he has the goods to be around a long time in the Middleweight division.

The NBA has a voice that’s why they have a lockout. The NFL has a voice that’s why they had a lockout. Boxing is the only sport that’s individually represented the individual people – Managers, Promoters and Boxers.

The only way you can get experience is from the clock. Time works with some people and against some people. Fortunately, the clock has worked in my favor.

You’re hated by some, loved by others, but that’s what’s great about being different. If everybody loved you, that means you’re not doing the right thing most of the time.

If you don’t know your own value, somebody will tell you your value, and it’ll be less than you’re worth.

Anybody who thinks I’m taking this fight for a paycheck doesn’t know me. My whole life I’ve been achieving the impossible.

I really didn’t care. I’d do something to somebody and walk in front of them the next day like it never happened. I had very very low value on my own life.

I have the philosophy that I’m different. I have the body, the well-being and the experience. Now the teacher gets to show the student that he’s worthy of the lesson. Let me show him through experience.

There’s always a chance you will see something new in a fight. Especially in boxing.

If I do not fight bigotry wherever it is, bigotry is thereby strengthened. And to the degree that it is strengthened, it will, thereby, have the power to turn on me.

I don’t have any great love for Chicago. What the hell, a childhood around Douglas Park isn’t very memorable. I remember the street fights and how you were afraid to cross the bridge ’cause the Irish kid on the other side would beat your head in. I left Chicago a long time ago.

As a fighter, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do to get the big fights.

Let no man surrender so long as he is unwounded and can fight.

People are still people, and they make their decisions based on their life experiences and their beliefs. You really can’t divorce the two. It’s important to fight against stereotypes and oversimplifications in very complex people.

The controversy was that Chad Dawson thought he was in an MMA fight and not a boxing match.

I am an old man, I just happen to be an old man that can fight.