I’ve never met someone so driven [Katie Taylor]. Katie, Eddie Hearn, 2018
I do want to bring women’s boxing to a new level. ibid. Katie
She just seemed to be born to boxing. ibid. father
She is the world champion again! Unbelievable! ibid. Irish boxing commentary
Post-fight interviewer: We’ve never experienced anything like this
Katie: Neither have I. ibid.
She really is something very very special. ibid. Sky Sports UK television commentary
She is the money fight in the division. ibid. Eddie Hearn
The world over, cultures have been shaped through combat. Each culture unique in their approach to scratch out their survival. Fightworld s1e1: Mexico: La Pistola y el Corazon, Netflix 2018
Mexico: home to some of the greatest fighters the sport of boxing has ever known. ibid.
Mexican boxing is about fighting in the pocket, very rarely backing up, very rarely surrendering … They pride themselves on being the toughest in the ring. ibid.
When you get in the ring you change. You’re something else. Someone else. You get wound up. The crowd screaming. Sweat pouring off ya. All you want to do is chase him. Catch him. Hurt him. You can feel it when you hurt him. All you want to do is hurt him bad. Fox IV: It’s All Them Psychia-Whatever-You-Call-Books He Reads, Kenny’s monologue, Thames 1980
I wish you could get him back training again, Eddie. Fox X: Just an Iron Monkey, Nan
I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since … Sport? It’s not a sport. It’s disgusting, it’s obscene. All those animals screaming out, ‘Kill him, Kenny! Go on, Kenny, kill him!’ Well I did. I did kill him. And you, Eddie. You taught me how. ibid. Kenny
Boxing has that anticipation of the most devastating, humiliating thing a man can ever go through … There’s nothing quite like it. One Night: Joshua vs Ruiz, Sylvester Stallone, BBC 2019
He had all the ingredients to be one of the great heavyweights. ibid. Chris Mannix
And the guy they chose was Andy Ruiz. A man that few people had ever seen fight. ibid. boxer/Stallone
This is the pinnacle: heavyweight champion at the Garden. ibid. US fight commentary
Joshua’s been down twice. Wow! ibid.
Glasgow Friday 13th October 1995: Boxer Jim Murray is preparing for a fight. It will change his life. And boxing forever. Fight: The Jim Murray Story, captions, BBC 2020
Can he get up? He’s on the verge of exhaustion. He’s not going to get up … ibid. fight commentary
In the UK, on average Boxing had killed one fighter per year by 1995. ibid. caption
‘He said, “Aw, mum, it’s just another day”.’ ibid. mum
A former boxer executed in broad daylight. A gangland killing at the weigh-in of a European title fight. And a suspected mobster at the heart of world boxing. Daniel Kinahan has been publicly named as the head of one of Europe’s most brutal drugs gangs. So why has the alleged cartel boss been allowed to work with some of the world’s top boxers? And why isn’t the world of boxing stopping him? Panorama: Boxing and the Mob, Darragh McIntyre reporting, BBC 2021
Former Olympic champion Anthony Joshua will take on Tyson Fury, the Gypsy king. ibid.
At MGM [gym] Tyson began working with the gym’s co-founder, Irish expat Michael Kinahan. ibid.
Other visitors to MGM were attracting attention too. ibid.
Europol agrees: It says the Kinahan Cartel trades drugs and weapons across Europe. And described them as extremely violent. ibid.
The losing fighter loses more than just his pride in the fight. He loses part of his future. He’s a step closer to the slum he came from. Floyd Patterson
As much as I love boxing, I hate it. And as much as I hate it, I love it. The Kings I: From Ghetto to Glory to Gold ***** Budd Schulberg, DiscoveryPlus 2021
Boxing is always an opening act to everything else that is happening in the world … You knew on some level you were seeing history. ibid. Teddy Atlas
You have four great fighters: Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns, Roberto Duran Marvin Hagler who were fighting each other, and it was enthralling. ibid. Thomas Hauser
Their fights meant so much. The four kings gave us unique personalities, unique fighters who all fought each other to their credit and created a time in boxing that was maybe the greatest period in the history of the sport. ibid. Steve Farhood
Muhammad Ali was bigger than life and I wanted to be bigger than life too. ibid. Ray Leonard
Boxing allowed me to get the best help medically; I only did it to help my father to pay the bills. ibid.
He [Benitez] was so elusive. I never missed so many punches in my life. I never gave up. I never stopped throwing punches. ibid.
Hagler embodies the traditional American fighter. A working man. Nothing was ever handed to him. ibid. Richard O’Brien
Put on your headset, Sugar Ray, so we can hear you … Coming up you’re going to see a youngster from Detroit, just seventeen years of age named Hearns – one of the slickest boxers you want to see. ibid. Cosell to Sugar Ray, commentators to amateur contest
I realised at the very beginning this kid is a freak. Most of the welterweights were you know five-seven, five-eight, he’s like six-one-and-a-half and he’s got a seventy-eight inch reach. He was just different. He stood out. ibid. Jackie Kallen, Kronk Gym
Leonard v Duran: We believe that this event will be the highest grossing boxing match in the history of the sport. ibid. Bob Arum
Roberto Hands of Stone Duran: From the moment he hit centre stage he was an anti-hero. He was thought of as the bad boy of boxing. ibid. Al Bernstein
Roberto Duran – he got inside my head. He would talk trash, he would curse me, curse my wife, and I said I’m going to beat him at his own game. And that’s where I went wrong. He got under my skin. He hit me with so many punches, so many times, so many places, it’s like a Tasmanian Devil. ibid. Sugar Ray
The truth can come to you in a lot of places in life. But it comes to you a lot faster in the ring. It’s the express train. You find out who the frig you are. ibid. Teddy Atlas
The fight that really made Duran was this fight. But he won and lost that night. Who would have thought that on the night that was going to lead him to his greatest moment, to open the gates to great wealth. Of all the things this poor kid from Panama starved for, dreamed of, was the same night that was going to condemn him in the future. All the things that made Duran great and made the world watch, made his legend, were gone after that night. ibid.
It is easier to built strong children than to repair broken men. The Kings s1e2: Flesh and Blood, Frederick Douglass
It’s a relationship that’s as close to being a parent as anything could be. But there’s a twist to it. ibid. Rory Gordon
WBA Welterweight: Hearns v Cuevas: I had to shine to show the world. I was the the fighter they thought I was going to be. ibid.
They have no idea how much work it took for me to become who I became. ibid. Leonard
Roberto Duran was a folk hero in Panama even before he became the welterweight champion of the world. The Panamanians love him. ibid. news report
New Orleans: Leonard v Duran II: The Super Fight 25th November 1980: And I glance over at Duran. Man, you are in trouble. This is America, baby. ibid.
Ray had humiliated this street kid. And something in him popped. ibid. Larry Merchant
Marvyn Hagler was an all-round boxer. He could box. He could slug … He was hard on himself. ibid. Richard Steele
Hagler v Minter: It’s the third round and Hagler is all over him. ibid. US fight commentary
Leonard v Hearns: I knew in my heart I’d give him something he’d never seen before. ibid. Hearns
I dominated him. I showed Ray what boxing was all about. ibid.