Gerry Cooney

“I know I can fight; that's the only thing that matters to me.”

“Boxing gave me a voice to express the anger I felt for where I came from.”

“I was a small kid from Huntington, Long Island. I never imagined that anything like that would happen to me.”

“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.”

“I've just had some bad luck. I've had every injury known to man. I understand how people think, 'How can this be happening all the time to Gerry Cooney?' But it did.”

“It's tough waking up in the morning and reading derogatory stories about you.”

“Too many fighters stay in the game for too long. They stay because it's awfully hard to walk away from the roar of the crowd. Really hard. You live for that and so you stay too long. And you might have a wife and kids to feed. So you keep fighting because you don't know how to do anything else.”

“It's like you always think that when you get to a goal, you'll be happy. But then there is always something else that interests you.”

“I'm a real person. I have real feelings. I have real thoughts. It's a quality people like about me. They can reach out and touch me. I wouldn't give it up for anything.”

“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.”

“Anytime somebody climbs up those steps into the ring, they have a heart.”

“I have this want-to-be-liked thing, but deep down, I had this rage. I was just - I was blinded. I wasn't healthy enough to be able to learn more. I had one mode - to fight.”

“I never fought because of my father. I started to box before he pushed me. It had nothing to do with him.”

“The fight with Holmes was a plus. I gained so much experience.”

“By the time you're 30 years old, you can be on a nowhere street, if you're not careful.”

“It took me to be 33 to start to know how to fight.”

“When that bell rang, I wanted to go out there and do my thing.”

“The road hasn't always been paved for me. People identify with that. Everybody passes through hard times, and I think that's part of my appeal - that I have, too.”

“I believe in my abilities as a fighter.”

“When you bottom out, you have to stand up and get going again.”