Quotes About Adversity

I've lived in a trailer park.

I used to be in the trailer park with one glove on because I didn't have two, punching myself in the face saying, 'I'm Johnny Tapia' to intimidate the other kids that I would box.

You know you're in for a tough time if you're trailing and the other teams are doing well.

Everyone can train hard when they are feeling good. But it's the days when you're feeling bad that you have to step up. That's when champions step up. They pull through.

We always train with heavier sparring partners to make it harder so the fight will be easier.

I have seen hard times in my life. I lost my foot and was badly injured after a gang of thieves threw me out of the running train. I laid down on the tracks for hours and later was hospitalised. I could have failed and died.

In my 20s, it was easy. In your 40s, it's a lot more challenging. You have to look at it like you're an actor, but you're also a professional athlete. You have to train.

If you havent been through anything difficult, the minute you do, it will hit you like a freight train and you wont know what to do because youve never been given the tools to deal with it.

I had to get up run in the morning for 2 hours, go to the gym and also get good opponents as sparring partners because I'm a big believer in that how you train is how you will fight at least when it came to me that's how it worked.

To be able to live and train in Iraq under these circumstances you need to be brave.

It's not good to focus on one person or two persons about being your rivals. The important thing is just to train hard and be ready for the competition and to prepare for the races so that in case of anything that comes out, you are able to handle it.

I think gymnastics trained me as a person, too. Without the lessons I learned in gymnastics, I would be crushed.

We trained for a lot more malfunctions than any ever happen.

I really feel that if it wasn't for the accident, I'd still be fighting. I would have handled some of these fighters. I would have made sure that the doctors would have declared me physically sound; and after that, I would have trained.

One thing that I don't think my critics realize about me is that I've been trained to look adversity in the face.

Every situation I have ever been in I have been trained for, and I dealt with it to the best of my abilities.

I was trained to be very tough. My mom told me I shouldn't cry; I shouldn't be afraid of anything.

When you're trained for battle, the idea is that it will be man against man.

In all my life, I've been trained that when there's a big problem, you run toward it.

I've experienced racism and homophobia my whole life, so I've trained myself to just deal with it calmly, to not cause a scene, and to find a way to calm the situation down.

Even in school, I was that kid others tried to pull down because I was naughty and did well in sports and academics. Life has trained me well.

On my block, I had all these guys coming in and out of jail. When I was 13, I was playing outside my house, and one of those guys came across the street and started cussing me out, wanting to fight me. People knew I trained kickboxing and would put the gloves on with my friends, so that made me a target.

There was no roof where we trained, so it used to get very hot during the day and the mud used to feel very cold during the evening.

I had no idea if I could fight when I first started. My first four amateur fights, I had never even been punched in the face or trained of any kind.