Tony Ferguson Quotes

I experienced firsthand what it means to be poor, what it means to go hungry, and that, I think, may be the reason, the root cause of why I'm able to work so hard, even these days.

My mother was one of seven girls whose parents went to bed hungry so their children wouldn't. My father lost his mother when he was nine. He left school and went to work for the next 70 years. They emigrated to America with little more than the hope of a better life.

When I was struggling to get recognition as a wrestler, I faced innumerable hardships. I even slept on the ring itself after finishing my practice. Those days, I did not have a house to live.

I'm used to working hard and making sacrifices.

Wrestling school was probably one of the hardest things I've ever done. It just killed me.

It's so funny looking back, but my so-called overnight success actually took 15 years. I remember when I didn't have any money, and my only car was mom's Hyundai.

A lot of times when people become successful, people don't really understand what they had to do or the sacrifices they made to do that, or they assume that they had money. This is coming from, like, a kid who was broke and lived with roaches and a single mom in Dorchester.

When I started out, I struggled, and I was broke a lot. But I'm glad I struggled, and I'm glad I was broke a lot.

God bless my mother - she's long gone now, but she'd work all day and go to school at night. She started out in life as a housekeeper at 15 years old, totally on her own, and she retired as a college professor. But there were some hard times. It's not easy for a woman who's only trying to do the best for her kid but who could never be home.

You look at anything I've been a part of, it's when the laboring, the fatigue, when some of those things happen, that's what shows what you're going to be.

I've always been the person to look at any turmoil as temporary. I recall times where my mom was working five and six jobs, and there's still no food in the house.

Coming out of Juilliard, I honestly was expecting and willing to be breaking my neck, hustling, and being unemployed for a decade, two decades. I was gritting my teeth, but I was so down to do that.

I lived below the poverty line when I was young and starting out as a writer. But my wife and I kept trying to do things better, as anyone with ambition does. But just because you're trying doesn't mean you're always going to succeed.

Poverty makes you work really hard.

It's not good for anybody if they're out of a team. No one is happy when they're not playing but the most important thing in that situation is to be strong and to work hard.

When things are scary, or there's a struggle, I always think, 'How is this going to sound in my biography?' Sometimes I would just be living on protein shakes or the cheapest food that I could afford because I didn't have a lot of money.

I think that I'm lucky in that, even at levels where I, by and large, wasn't making enough money to sustain my life, I worked as a male nanny, I waited tables and did what I had to, to keep doing theater and acting.

Back at the beginning of my career, I had to make all these sacrifices - sleeping in a car on nights where I'd wrestle in front of 20,000 people - because I wasn't making any money.

We had nothing, no money, when I was young. We lived in a council house. My dad struggled; my mum struggled. But that made me what I am. If I had everything on a plate from the start, maybe I would not have been a champion for 11 years.

You'll find out that nothing that comes easy is worth a dime. As a matter of fact, I never saw a football player make a tackle with a smile on his face. Never.

Anything worth doing hurts a little.

Those who have nothing have only their discipline.

When I started in radio, I worked for free. I lived at the radio station. Then I worked for very little money.

I am struggling, though. It’s f-cking hard. So little sleep. It’s 23 hours and 59 minutes of exhaustion. They do one little thing in that last minute that is just so compelling and fascinating that it makes the other 23 hours and 59 minutes worthwhile.