Teddy Atlas

Cus always said if you could get a heavyweight that could fight like Henry Armstrong, throwing punches nonstop, never giving his opponent a chance to breathe, you’d have a champion.

It taught me something about human psychology: that no matter how you’re perceived, no matter what people see on the outside, what’s inside you can be completely different and probably is

Frequently, when you’re doing a thing, you’re only aware of the way you feel. You connect the way you feel with the way you must look. If you feel inhibited, which people often do when they’re performing difficult and demanding tasks, especially physical ones, then you feel that must be the way you look. You don’t realize that you look fine

Because if you don’t train today, it’s not that this one day is gonna make you out of shape physically, it’s gonna make you soft mentally.

But like they say, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

The other thought I had was that I needed to tell him why he’d gotten knocked down, what his mistake had been, so he could feel good about going back out there. Because the worst thing for a fighter is to go back out there not knowing why he got hit. It’s like sending a guy into a dark room. He doesn’t know what’s there.