Sugar Ray Leonard Quotes

If you look at my career, towards the end you will see I was fighting like once a year. I was not part of the Don King top heavyweights, so I was kind of kept out. His guys were getting three to four fights a year and I could only get one.

The bad press came because they thought I should fight more. I couldn't get the fights because if I would sign to fight one of King's guys I would be signed to him. I chose not to do that. In hindsight, that might have been a mistake.

Boxing's a business, and I've got a great team around me who have been looking after me in that sense.

I got messed up between my fight with Ken Norton and my fight with Larry Holmes; I got messed up with alcohol. I needed at least a year more experience, with three or four more fights before I fought Holmes. But I couldn't get any fights. Don King had all the contenders, and unless I signed myself over to him, I couldn't get a fight.

We all think we've got one more boxing match in us, and that, probably, will be the downfall of Floyd Mayweather, George Foreman, Manny Pacquiao. We'll overstay our welcome.

I don't have a no-trade clause. I figure someone is going to pick me up.

I don't like to deal with studios.

I don't need David Haye and his antics to earn money.

Only free men can negotiate: prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.

I had two managers who couldn't stand each other. I had a promoter, Don King, who couldn't get any fights, and I was fighting once a year. I knocked out Norton and then didn't fight for 13 months. Then I fight the heavyweight champion of the world.

Bernard Hopkins? He fights scary dirty. I mean, he did what he had to do in his career.

I don't care what you say about me anymore! I don't care what you write about me anymore. I don't care! This is my life. I can't have anybody messing with my life. I just want to be Gerry Cooney, doing what I want to do. I want to be what I am. A fighter.

Looking back, I couldn't get enough fights because Don King owned most of the top 10 fighters, and he never gave me a fight.

I'd most prefer to be a free agent and fight up to six times a year, but that is unlikely.

Daniel Jacobs is a big name over in America, which is somewhere obviously I want to get my name bigger, so there are potential big fights out there for me.

Boxing has been good to me and I believe I have been good for boxing.

Promoters need you. You don't need them... The boxer has the leverage, and a lot of boxers don't know that.

My career has been very difficult. People respect the fact that I haven't just turned professional like Amir Khan or Audley Harrison, and it's been, 'Here's a million pound' - for spoilt brats to fight a couple of fights.

Kids always used to come up and ask me if I ever fought Mike Tyson, and I used to tell them that we couldn't because we were in different weight classes.

I could never be a control freak. If Wu-Tang is a dictatorship, how does every Wu-Tang member have their own contract, their own career, and have put out more albums without me than they've done with me?

That's part of free agency. You can go where you want at the end of the day.

Nowadays, it's not more about the sport; it's about the business. All the boxers became businessmen, not boxers. They look just to get the money, not the glory.

The one thing a creator can bring to the table when everybody else has all the money and power is centeredness and the ability to walk away. Never sit at a table you can't walk away from.

Bob arum is Manny Pacquiao's boss, Floyd Mayweather is his own boss.

I received a letter from the Reich Ministry of Sports. They want me to split from Joe Jacobs, my manager since 1928.... I really need Joe Jacobs. I owe all my success in America to him.