Gerry Cooney Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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

And I remember leaving my place in L.A. and - my father is a big fight fan - and I said, 'Dad, I got a couple of days off and I'm getting ready to go to Houston to sign to fight Muhammad Ali.

I made the decision to turn pro, and I remember what Ali said to me: 'Get Angelo Dundee. He's the right complexion with the right connection.' He knew boxing. Our relationship was so genuine, so sincere.

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

Yes, I think about having a career in boxing, but I want to start from the bottom, start from zero. I want to get ranked and one day fight for a belt. I don't want to fight just to fight, for money, to go after big fights and challenge a great champion.

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.

I always said as an amateur that I'd want to one day fight and beat Kindelan because he was the best out there.

People ask me about Orlando Salido. My answer is that I fight for Top Rank and will take on who they schedule for me. But I would like to welcome Salido to Lomachenko University in the ring some day.

I just want to fight the best guys that there is in the world and make the most money out of it.

I would definitely be interested in a rematch with Callum Smith.

The thing with professional boxing is you have to have the right promoter and the right fights. It is a cut-throat business.

I know people say I could be the next big pay-per-view star. They say that about a lot of fighters. To reach that, it takes a lot. Not just fighting skills, but marketing, good promotion.

It's a big move from the 'Tough Man' circuit to professional boxing. When I turned pro, I had to play catch-up and was fighting almost twice a month until I had more than 20 fights under my belt.

My personal feeling is that Bernard Hopkins has never been an industry boy.

I would love to fight Ricky Hatton.

If I look forward to bigger fights, than the biggest fight for me is Manny Pacquiao.

I want to get bigger and better fights, where people can recognize me as one of the better fighters in the world.

Kostya Tszyu was the best payday of my career to that point, even though I thought it should have been better.

If I would've fought Andre Ward in my prime, I would've beat him.

Of course I will turn professional at some stage. Then I want to be a world champion and finish up a legend and be out of the sport by the time I am 27.

I want Keith Thurman. He has two of the belts, and we both have big names. It's an easy fight to make, and I want it.

My second pro fight was at Madison Square Garden, on the undercard of Naseem Hamed's fight against Kevin Kelley.