Bernard Hopkins Fighting Quotations

I was knocking guys out in the streets before I knew how to throw a jab and keep your chin down, In most neighbourhoods, the guy that could fight gets respect. You got in the parties free. I never had to pay the dollar because people were scared of me. But back then I was ignorant.

You think it's hard for me when I go in the ring and fight? That's the least of my problems. I think about the five years that I did in prison. I think about the nine years on parole. Nothing - nothing! - can compare to that struggle. I'm telling you, from being an ex-convict with 30 convictions, a degree nowhere to be found and black? I'm done.

There's always a chance you will see something new in a fight. Especially in boxing.

The controversy was that Chad Dawson thought he was in an MMA fight and not a boxing match.

Anybody who thinks I'm taking this fight for a paycheck doesn't know me. My whole life I've been achieving the impossible.

I wouldn't wanna fight me, because I know it wouldn't be a good outcome for both.

This fight isn't about boxing, it's something deeper than that.

I am going in there to win this fight. I don't think people are taking me seriously. I'm gonna surprise a lot of people. This guy helped two people make history.

The Pavlik fight was the first time I heard the masses put the word knockout attached to my opponent. I'm real keen on what people say. Ninety percent of it might be garbage, but something in there might be the plan. That woke me up and I knew I wanted to destroy.

I didn't need to take any fight for the last 10 years. But I've always fought the best and I've always wanted to prove myself to the best.

I am an old man, I just happen to be an old man that can fight.

The thing that most people don't understand is that I don't believe I lost the last two fights, which is why I am coming in a confident fighter. Tarver says I am fighting him for one more payday, but what Tarver don't realize is that I could have picked anyone to fight and still gone out making millions of dollars. But I chose to fight Antonio Tarver because, like I have said many times, I want to do what my boxing idol, Sugar Ray Robinson, couldn't do, and that's win the light heavyweight championship.