I was always at the gymnasium every day at six o'clock after school. In the mornings I would run, looking forward to future golden gloves and Olympic tournaments.
I'm sure no intelligent white person, in his or her right white mind, want black men and women marrying their white sons and daughters and in return introducing their grandchildren to half brown, kinky haired black people.
How could they say that my religion, Islam was a 'race hate' religion after all the plunder and enslavement and domination of my people by white Christians in the name of white supremacy?
Black people ALL are fightin' you all for freedom, justice and equality. One believes that intermarriage is gonna solve it, and 200 years from now we all will be a beautiful cream color. He really believes it. One believe that gittin' some rifles and shootin' up the country is gonna solve it, another believes that education. One day we'll be the president. One believe that we gotta git into the white man's pockets and get all the money.
I'm proud, and Islam did it. And after these things that I heard in church, a preacher and watching this and that, I knew something was wrong but I couldn't pinpoint it.
I say get an education. Become an electrician, a mechanic, a doctor, a lawyer, anything but a fighter. In this trade, it's the managers that make the money and last the longest.
When I was 9, I saw a wrestler on television named Gorgeous George. He said, "I'm beautiful. I'm so pretty that if a sucker touches my face, I'll kill him. If he messes with my hair, I'll pummel him." I said to myself, "That's a good idea. I am the greatest, I'm pretty." And then I took it a little further than he did.
Boxing is a stepping stone just to introduce me to the audience. If I was still in Louisville, Kentucky and never was a boxer I still might get killed next week in some kind of freedom struggle and you'd ever hear the news.
There ain't no such thing as black Muslims. That's how they tried to cut off all my brothers in the rest of the world and divide us in America and make other Muslims think that we are not with them.We are all the same. I recognise them and they recognise me. I'm invited to all of their homes all over the world and I'm invited to Muslim countries.