I used to tease Joe Louis by reminding him that I was the greatest of all time. But Joe Louis was the greatest heavyweight fighter ever.

I have a deep, deep belief that if I tell you I’m going to crack you with a clean shot to the chin inside one minute of the first round and you will be unconscious, well, then that’s what will happen.

People say that I’m a boxer. I actually started with kick boxing, and then I moved onto boxing, and then I moved onto grappling.

I’m in the game of spinning plates. I’m spinning a boxing plate. I’m spinning a Tae Kwon Do plate. I’m spinning a Jujitsu plate. I’m spinning a freestyle wrestling plate. I’m spinning a karate plate. If I was to put all them down and have one boxing plate spinning, it would be like a load off my shoulders.

Your teammates give you the confidence. They give me the confidence all year, all postseason.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

I need to do well and show I’m a worthy driver in F1.

I would say things like ‚I am the greatest! I’m pretty! If you talk jive, you’ll drop in five! I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee! I’m pretty!‘ When white people heard me talking like this, some said, ‚That black man talks too much. He’s bragging.‘

I’d be so bored if I wasn’t going out there, knowing that I could still do it. So, I’m going to work hard to be ready to go, and I still plan on playing for a long time.

The biggest thrill a ballplayer can have is when your son takes after you. That happened when my Bobby was in his championship Little League game. He really showed me something. Struck out three times. Made an error that lost the game. Parents were throwing things at our car and swearing at us as we drove off. Gosh, I was proud.

No one knows what to say in the loser’s locker room.

I didn’t mean to hit the umpire with the dirt, but I did mean to hit that bastard in the stands.

Let’s face it. Umpiring is not an easy or happy way to make a living. In the abuse they suffer, and the pay they get for it, you see an imbalance that can only be explained by their need to stay close to a game they can’t resist.

I always bring out the best in men I fight, but Joe Frazier, I’ll tell the world right now, brings out the best in me. I’m gonna tell ya, that’s one helluva man, and God bless him.

You’re not going to see my sense of humor on the football field. That’s not a place for me to joke around.

Boxing is limited fighting with a specific rule set. Fighting is true, where you can do anything.

I’m not the greatest; I’m the double greatest. Not only do I knock ‚em out, I pick the round.

I’ve seen George Foreman shadow boxing, and the shadow won.

Sonny Liston is nothing. The man can’t talk. The man can’t fight. The man needs talking lessons. The man needs boxing lessons. And since he’s gonna fight me, he needs falling lessons.

Talking to a player helps, but in our sport the majority of learning happens from watching another player. You pick up things like being punctual, being nice to everyone, making sure you give your 100 per cent even in training.

My trainer don’t tell me nothing between rounds. I don’t allow him to. I fight the fight. All I want to know is did I win the round. It’s too late for advice.

There’s been a lot of talk of me being a one-man show but that’s simply not the case. We win games when I score 40 points and we’ve won when I score 10.

WIth football you can have up to 28 guys you consider starters, and if they can pick up the slack when some aren’t playing so well, you don’t have to turn those two game losing streaks into six-game losing streaks.

It never bothered me when people would say, ‚You only win championships because you’re playing with Shaq.‘ It bothered me when he said it.

Never put your money against Cassius Clay, for you will never have a lucky day.

Cassius Clay is a name that white people gave to my slave master. Now that I am free, that I don’t belong anymore to anyone, that I’m not a slave anymore, I gave back their white name, and I chose a beautiful African one.

If they let people go fight jiu-jitsu tournaments, they can’t stop me going to fight a boxing fight.

If you’re a quarterback, you want everything on your shoulders. You want to be the one to make the decisions.

No boxer in the history of boxing has had Parkinson’s. There’s no injury in my brain that suggests that the illness came from boxing.

Before broadcasting for 50-some years, I did TV, played 10 years in the big leagues, won a world championship – and played a big part in that, too, letting the Cardinals inject me with hepatitis. Takes a big man to do that.

You think the world was shocked when Nixon resigned? Wait till I whup George Foreman’s behind.

To kids, I’ve always been more than just some big tough black guy. I train to be tough – I box and do karate – but underneath all that toughness is a tender man.

Phil Niekro and his brother were pitching against each other in Atlanta. Their parents were sitting right behind home plate. I saw their folks more that day than they did the whole weekend.

I’m all for a good rivalry as long as lines are drawn.

I am in the fighting game. I don’t care about anything else. I don’t watch the news, I don’t care about politics, I don’t care about other sports. I don’t care about anything I don’t need to care about. This is my sport: it is my life. I study it; I think about it all the time. Nothing else matters.

I have the Midas touch, in the way that when I hook up with a project, I feel, not speaking cocky or conceited, but there’s a confidence I have. I learned that from Muhammad Ali; I used to bodyguard him. He taught me about confidence. So when it comes to any job I work, I’m gonna do it good; I’m going to bring it over the top.

In the game of cricket, a hero is a person who respects the game and does not corrupt the game. The one who doesn’t or corrupts the game, they are the villain. They should be punished, and they have been punished in the past.

I like the celebrations when I see my teammates do it, when I see fellow footballers on the international scene do it. I think it looks good, it suits most of them, if you know what to do, synchronise, then do it.

When I looked at the third base coach, he turned his back on me.

I’m not going to fight because I mean too much to our team, and I can’t afford to be suspended for a game or do something stupid to get me kicked out of a playoff game.

The way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until it stops rolling and then pick it up.

Ali’s got a left, Ali’s got a right – when he knocks you down, you’ll sleep for the night; and when you lie on the floor and the ref counts to ten, hope and pray that you never meet me again.

You must keep raising this game to higher and higher levels, as on the pool table – mastering eventually the psychological angles. Your playing is a pleasure, all the way to the end, to death, when the game is over.

Once you get on the playing field it’s not about whether you’re liked or not liked. All that matters is to play at a high level and do whatever it takes to help your team win. That’s what it’s about.

I will fight in many weight divisions.

I’m already the face of the UFC, plus the face of boxing, WWE, and Hollywood.

Keeping score is for games, not friendships.

As a kid, even I knew everything about my favourite cricketers. I used to know everything possible. Now I see kids knowing about me. It feels good.

The true competitors, though, are the ones who always play to win.

Some people take defeat and losses a certain way. You see how some fighters take losses.

I’m proud to play for Real Madrid because I have fun; when you no longer have fun it’s a sign that it’s time to leave. For now though, I’m happy here at the greatest club in the world.

If I said I would knock out Sonny Liston in 1 minute and 49 seconds of the first round, that would hurt the gate.

I’m a pretty good winner. I’m a terrible loser. And I rub it in pretty good when I win.

As long as I stay in training and play well, I don’t see what objection there can be to what I do off the field.

People don’t realize what they had till it’s gone. Like President Kennedy, there was no one like him, the Beatles, and my man Elvis Presley. I was the Elvis of boxing.

I know what I do for my team and what my teammates expect of me on both ends of the floor.

Rule number one is: Beat your team-mate.

I shoot the ball so well that sometimes you fall in love with it and think it’ll get you out of certain situations.

I used to dream about taking the ball ‚round the keeper, stopping it on the line, and then getting on my hands and knees and heading it into the net. When I scored against Benfica in the 1968 European Cup final, I nearly did it. I left the keeper for dead, but then I chickened out.

I done wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale; handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail; only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalised a brick; I’m so mean I make medicine sick.

I’m just glad I play for Coach Belichick.