03.10.05 – By James Allan: Boxing has without doubt thrown up some memorable characters and some classic quotes. The game can very often be a brutal business. Injuries, both minor and serious occur and death sometimes stalks the sport. Fighters get ripped off, fans get ripped off and promoters and managers too often are the ones who profit from it. But after saying all this, it has produced some of the funniest characters to ever get involved in organised sport.
Max Baer, Willie Pep, Bob Arum, Jack Johnson, Sam Langford the list of quotable figures is almost endless. However, there are to my mind, three men who stand above the rest when it comes to delivering classic one liners and put down’s.
1. James Toney
Toney is without doubt the most consistentely funny guy in boxing today. His put downs and smart arse remarks are fast propelling him into legendary status. No matter what the rest of his fighting career holds for him his trash talking alone deserves to earn him a place in the hall of fame –
“The fight with Ruiz is going to be any way he wants to make it. He can do it the hard way, get beat up for 12 rounds and end up in the hospital. Or, he can do it the easy way, get hit on the chin and go to sleep.”
“John Ruiz, he younger than me and I destroyed him with one hand!”
“Evander and I are great warriors. We put blood and guts in the ring. We do not run around and hug and kiss. Well, Evander might do that, but I do not.”
“Dominick Guinn was the only one in the top 10 who had the balls to get into the ring with me! You got Chris Byrd, Wladimir Klitschko, Vitali Klitschko. They all suddenly gotta be doin’ something else or having surgery or something like that.”
“The Klitschkos, they suck. Chris Byrd, I will put him to sleep. Chris Byrd is garbage. Fres Oquendo is garbage. Every heavyweight in the division is garbage.”
“You do not want anyone to run around for 12 rounds unless you are in the ballet.”
“I was not right the first time against Jones. He took advantage of it and won the fight. Bring his ass on now. Bring anybody. Lewis, Klitschko, Tyson, Jones, their mommas. I will knock them all out.”
2. Muhammed Ali
All right, so it’s an obvious one, but the fact still remains that Ali was one of the most quotable boxing figure of all time. Ali could be cruel, Joe Frazier knows that only too well, but he could also be hysterically funny. Here are a few of his to remind us why he is still called the greatest –
“It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.”
“Howard Cosell was gonna be a boxer when he was a kid—only they couldn’t find a mouthpiece big enough.”
When asked about his golf game: “I’m the best. I just haven’t played yet.”
Ali talking about Floyd Patterson – “He’s too short, he’s to slow, he can’t take a punch, he don’t hit hard and he hasn’t got the footwork.”
“Fifteen referees. I want fifteen referees to be at this fight because there ain’t no one man who can keep up with the pace I’m gonna set except me. There’s not a man alive who can whup me. I’m too fast. I’m too smart. I’m too pretty. I should be a postage stamp. That’s the only way I’ll ever get licked.”
“My toughest fight was with my first wife, and she won every round.”
“I’m so fast that last night I turned the light switch off in my bedroom and I was in bed before the room was dark.”
“It’s hard to be humble, when you’re as great as I am.”
3. Randall ‘Tex’ Cobb
Cobb is the funniest guy to ever lace up a pair of boxing gloves. Even Cobb’s throwaway quotes would be diamond’s in someone else’s mouth. Not the best fighter to ever challenge for the Heavyweight title, he is without doubt the most hilarious. There are so many brilliant Cobb quotes that it would be impossible to list them all. If I could choose just one boxer to sit and talk to, Cobb would be the one I would pick. Here are a few of his best to help you understand why –
Cobb’s reply on being told that his savage beating against Larry Holmes persuaded Howard Cosell to never again commentate on another boxing match. “If I had known that’s what it would take to get Cosell to quit doing boxing I would have fought Holmes a long time ago.”
Cobb responding to a reporter who had called him a fat, cocaine snorting drunk.
“I’m not fat.”
Cobb on after being knocked down in a fight he was involved in –
“When I got up I stuck to my plan — stumbling forward and getting hit in the face.”
Cobb on an attempt to berate Don King –
“I was at this affair with a bunch of different people involved in the boxing business, and King shows up. I stood up and called him every name in the book. King was slick, though. He extended an arm my way, took the floor, and said, ‘Let’s hear it for Tex Cobb, a great entertainer, great showman…’ He made it sound like I was just putting on.”
“I was once knocked out by a Mexican bantamweight – six of my pals were swinging him around by his heels at the time.”
“Philadelphia is the only place where you see two winos in a street fight jabbing.”
“Larry Holmes doesn’t hit as hard as Earnie Shavers. Nobody hits like Shavers. If anybody hit harder than Shavers, I’d shoot him.”
Cobb on being asked his best punch – “I don’t know, I’ve never hit myself.”
I hope you enjoyed these and I hope some of them you haven’t heard before, but even if you have, they are always worth hearing again.