Teddy Atlas

“Cus always said that you're a teacher. Cus thought I was born to teach. That was his opinion.”

“Mike Tyson's a phony; he was a phony from the very beginning. A phony from the day he was born; and you can't say he was forced to be one.”

“I get the idea and the fact that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. What I have a problem with is when that opinion is supposed to be controlled and bordered by hard criteria. In other words, when you have a job, that job usually dictates adherence to rules.”

“My father was a GP, a general practitioner, on Staten Island. He took care of everybody. He took care of all the poor. He took care of people that fell through the cracks.”

“The ones who got all my father's attention were his patients. They were the ones who were sick and had problems. I was a kid that had everything you could ask for except the attention of my father. So what did I do? I made myself sick. I made myself damaged.”

“If you must die a little to become immortal, then both Ali and Frazier died a bit that night in their third meeting. If a life can be read like a book, then the hardest chapters of their existence were written that night in 'The Thrilla In Manila.'”

“A fight is not a fight until there's something to overcome.”

“I don't know jack-diddly-squat about jiu-jitsu. And I know enough to say that a guillotine doesn't look too comfortable. But I also know boxing and MMA are the same thing. They're both fighting. They're just different forms.”

“Perhaps that old-time character I knew through my life who once told a kid I knew that no matter what you get caught doing, never ever admit to it, was right. Sooner or later, at least some of the people who saw you do whatever you did will start to doubt what they saw.”

“Trevor Wittman, he was a former boxing trainer and now he's a big MMA coach, big UFC striking coach, MMA striking coach, does a great job.”

“You got to become calm in an uncommon environment but never become comfortable, never feel safe in a dangerous environment.”

“I like Kambosos a lot. He's a real fighter.”

“When you have power, that's your confessional booth - you can go in there and confess and be cleaned of all sins. If the fight isn't going your way, but you land a big punch, the fight is different from that point on.”

“As far as me injecting myself into a more prominent place by engaging in a battle before the battle that counts with the other trainer, I choose not to do that and I don't think that's appropriate or worthwhile or in any way meaningful. I think that my concentration is better spent getting my fighter ready and hope to God that I've done a good job.”

“As a trainer I realise that no matter what situation, or what the odds are, the person can be overwhelmed by fear and make the wrong choices even if they have physical advantages. It's how you deal with that fear, not your thoughts of it.”

“The criterion is clear. The person landing the cleaner more effective punches should be the victor.”

“Character is one of the truly great and underrated aspects of being successful. Passion is important too.”

“Sometimes steady is better than flashy, better than fast, better than electric, you know?”

“I don't know if there was ever as good a fighter as Tyson was for maybe one night he was great. He wasn't tested, but he might have been ready to be tested that one night against Michael Spinks when he took him apart in 90 seconds.”

“A racing car, yeah, it's got all those RPMs in it, it's got all that horsepower in it, a special race car, but it's up to the driver. Is the driver aggressive? Is the driver the guy that drove 'Miss Daisy?' If it's the guy that drove Miss Daisy, guess what? The race car don't mean diddly squat!”