Joe Frazier

Twenty years I've been fighting Ali, and I still want to take him apart piece by piece and send him back to Jesus.

When I was a boy, I used to pull a big cross saw with my dad. He'd use his right hand, so I'd have to use my left.

Ali always said I would be nothing without him. But what would he have been without me?

I know my destiny. I was born into animosity, bigotry and hatred. We had water for white folks, and water for coloured folks. White lines, black lines. I came from Beaufort in South Carolina, and it was tougher than Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.

My left eye went when I was young. I was working the speed bag, and some steel went in the eye and scratched it to pieces. I was kinda blind in that eye.

Preaching don't mean you are a true man. You got to go out and do.

I hated Ali. God might not like me talking that way, but it's in my heart.

I was never, ever once angry in the ring.

Joe Frazier's life didn't start with Ali. I was a Golden Gloves champ. Gold medal in Tokyo '64. Heavyweight champion of the world long before I fought Ali in the Garden.

When you work for me, you don't say good things about Ali.

The way I fight, it's not me beatin' the man. I make the man whip himself.

Fightin' George Foreman is like being in the street with an eighteen-wheeler comin' at you.

I don't want to be no more than what I am.

My family's support and the negative environment of the day toward blacks in South Carolina became the forces that led me out of the South - first to New York, then to Philadelphia, where I found opportunity in the form of a PAL gym and my trainer, Yank Durham.

Since I was a boy of five or six, I had it in my mind I would be a world boxing champion.

My mom allowed me to take an old burlap bag and fill it with moss, corn stalks and rocks, then hang it from a tree and spend an hour a day punching my heavy bag.

I've achieved 'the American dream.' I feel it's my duty to help others achieve their vision, too - especially the youth.

This ultimate fighting stuff is something I don't agree with. Once a man is down, you have to let him have a chance to prove how good he is.

I couldn't go to school with whites. Now there are schools that educate everyone.

The boxing game has been good, so we need to give back. We have to teach young men how to be men.

It was all about the ring. That's where you got your brains shook and the money took.

Life doesn't run away from nobody. Life runs at people.

Trust me. Sometimes God comes down and puts his hand on you if you're too big in your thoughts.

I went to see President Nixon at the White House. It wasn't difficult to get a meeting because I was heavyweight champion of the world. So I came to Washington and walked around the garden with Nixon, his wife and daughter. I said: I want you to give Ali his licence back. I want to beat him up for you.

Ali would not be Ali unless I had come along. Him and me had three fights.