Quotes from Joe Calzaghe

In America, they slag each other off at the press conference, then get in the ring and don't do anything.

When you've been at the top of the sport for so many years, it's your life, and it becomes very difficult just to quit boxing and find something else to be happy.

I don't know if I have the patience and I don't have a trainers license but I will help out. Whether I want to do that full time, I doubt it.

My father was a cocky, long-haired musician, a songwriter.

When it comes to the singing part, I think I missed the boat - the whole family can sing except for me. But they can't fight, so I suppose I've been a bit more successful than them there.

Having been a fighter for 25 years, I know how to handle the fear. The fear is there, but I use it to motivate me.

My dad is a great judge of fights. He's the only person I know who said that Holyfield would beat Tyson the first time.

It's unbelievable when I think back to when I was a kid that one day I would have achieved so much through boxing, and to think my teachers laughed at me when I said I was going to be a boxer.

It's not just a trainer - as a man, my dad was unbelievable. Even outside boxing, he was my friend as well. We were boxer and trainer in the gym, but as soon as that bell goes, we'd have a cup of tea, and we'd go on about normal life. We would just leave that bit behind. That's how we kept going.

There's no point looking good and losing. Winning is what it's all about, and you can't always look spectacular while doing it.

I don't seek the limelight. I'm perfectly happy with a quiet life and spending time with my family, but I deserve recognition.

Spiders - hate 'em.

My career has been very difficult. People respect the fact that I haven't just turned professional like Amir Khan or Audley Harrison, and it's been, 'Here's a million pound' - for spoilt brats to fight a couple of fights.

I like to give my kids the life I didn't have - they go to an excellent school; they have nice clothes, money for shopping. I'm quite generous with them, but they have fantastic manners - they're not spoilt.

I'm proud to be one of only a few fighters in history to retire undefeated.

At the end of your career, you go, 'I'm gonna be able to retire undefeated and be one of the very, very few people in history to do it.' People were saying I should try and get to 50-0, but my number was 46 - that was it. I could have kept trying, but one loss would have spoiled everything.

I'm close to achieving something that very few boxers ever have - and that is to retire undefeated, like Rocky Marciano.

There comes a time in any proud sportsman's career when you have to make the difficult decision to stop.

You can never say never in this game, but I can't see myself boxing again. There's loads of things I want to do.

I can't understand it myself - how nervous I was when I took the floor for 'Strictly Come Dancing.' I walk out with 50,000 people gathered in the Millennium Stadium to fight Mikkel Kessler in the unification fight for the super middleweight division in 2007, and I feel great... and here I am, wearing tight pants and Cuban heels, and freaking out.

Being retired is one thing, but staying retired is another. Even when I announced my retirement, I'm sure people thought I was going to come back.

Boxing definitely has a part to play in taking away unwanted aggression.

When you know yourself that you've come through preparation injury free and you've done everything, you've done the work in the gym and the rounds of sparring, it fills you with confidence.

It's one of the biggest disappointments of my boxing career, not going to the Olympics.