“I couldn’t fart in an elevator without people wanting to sue me.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I thought I was bulletproof, and I’m not.”
― Tommy Morrison
“Talk about the area of overcoming adversity, sucking it up, I rate myself a 10.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I don’t believe in past lifetimes, but if there was one, I had to be a gladiator.”
― Tommy Morrison
“Everybody’s looking at me expecting me to shrink up and die.”
― Tommy Morrison
“My life has been very much a roller coaster ride. Not just the boxing part, not just the acting part, just my childhood, what I was into at a young age and the things I was exposed to, it’s just very abnormal.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I realize that there’s a whole generation of kids out there like me who are totally disregarding the moral values taught to us by our parents.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I have a bad habit of fighting to the level of my competition.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I lived a permissive, fast, and reckless lifestyle. I hope I can serve as a warning that living this lifestyle can really lead to only one thing, and that’s misery.”
― Tommy Morrison
“To all my young fans out there, I ask that you no longer consider me a role model. See me as an individual who had the opportunity to be a role model but blew it. Blew it with irresponsible, irrational, immature decisions.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I just want to pursue my dream. That is to fight. That is what God put me here to do. He didn’t put me here to be a doctor or a lawyer. He put me here to fight.”
― Tommy Morrison
“Everyone wants to see the heavyweight division unified. It’ll happen.”
― Tommy Morrison
“There’s nothing more intimidating than crawling into a ring.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I’ll trust an attorney before I’ll trust a doctor.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I will lay down and die before I take any drugs.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I remember talking to Magic the day I announced I had HIV. He was preaching, ‘Do what your doctor tells you.’ Well, I didn’t have a doctor then, so I got down on my knees, and I prayed.”
― Tommy Morrison
“People think I’m crazy, and it’s been written in the papers that I’m off my rocker.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I’ve seen God work in my life, and I know what he’s capable of, and I know what he does for his people that love him.”
― Tommy Morrison
“HIV’s never been proven to cause AIDS. HIV ain’t ever killed anybody.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I’ve got the most complex – my life isn’t boring. It never has been.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I just want to fight the world. Fight the system. Fight everybody.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I’ve got plenty of contacts in Hollywood.”
― Tommy Morrison
“The heavyweight division needs me.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I cut my hand swimming in the Caribbean, it gets infected, and Channel 9 is calling me saying they heard rumors I cut my fingers off.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I’ll tell you this: Tommy Morrison has a tattoo of Elvis Presley on his butt, he likes to hunt and fish, and his favorite movie is ‘GoodFellas.’”
― Tommy Morrison
“People watch me… whatever I do, wherever I go.”
― Tommy Morrison
“If I was black or Hispanic, I wouldn’t get any criticism. Because I’m white, people expect so much more out of me. That’s a little unfair, but life isn’t fair.”
― Tommy Morrison
“As a white fighter, you get twice as much criticism.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I’ve had a lot of people tell me I’m faster than Tyson.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I never – I mean, I never saw any doctor’s report saying I was HIV positive. I never had a doctor explain to me and show me what was going on.”
― Tommy Morrison
“In the heavyweight division, you can’t afford to make a mistake.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I’ve fought tactical fights in a gym, but never in a fight before.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I didn’t live in L.A. I lived in Oklahoma, and I liked to do normal things with normal people.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I don’t think I have HIV. I don’t think that I ever had HIV. I think I had hepatitis. I got rid of the hepatitis, and since then, every single time I have tested for HIV, it has been negative. The original test was a false positive.”
― Tommy Morrison
“The rug was yanked out from under my feet by a misdiagnosis. All I want to do is fight.”
― Tommy Morrison
“Something that comes along with age causes you to simmer a bit.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I hate being around boxing people. I’d rather be back in the gym.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I’m guilty of reverse discrimination. I’m white, and people don’t think that white fighters are any good.”
― Tommy Morrison
“The mind is a very strong thing.”
― Tommy Morrison
“You can sit there and worry yourself sick if you’re a mentally weak person.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I knew the HIV virus was something anyone could get but also believed the chances were very slim… I honestly believed I had a better chance of winning the lottery than contracting this disease. I have never been so wrong in my life.”
― Tommy Morrison
“The rush you get from competing in front of the whole world, there’s nothing like it.”
― Tommy Morrison
“With my style, training is very rigorous. You’re toe-to-toe, getting beat on six days a week for five or six weeks leading to a fight. There’s no fun, no glamour.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I just turned 27 years old, and there are mornings where my knees and ankles really hurt. I hurt all over. I would hate to be me when I’m 35 years old. I’ll be a basket case, but I will have a lot of memories.”
― Tommy Morrison
“When I lost to Ray Mercer, I was young. I deserved to lose that fight because I hadn’t learned how to cover all the angles in preparation. I was immature.”
― Tommy Morrison
“If I met a girl, I’d tell her straight up, ‘I might run into someone else I want to go out with; don’t be offended.’ Was that acceptable to them? It had to be. There were enough girls. They were expendable.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I have had a couple of situations where I wasn’t the strongest person in the world.”
― Tommy Morrison
“God, it’s good to come home. No matter what you achieve, you come home, and everything is normal.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I know one thing: Ray Mercer is not going down from a head punch. I think he’s got one of the best chins in the game.”
― Tommy Morrison
“Boxing is a family tradition. The last five generations down to my dad have been fighters.”
― Tommy Morrison
“The ‘Tough Man’ contests were for 21-year-olds, but I weighed 150 pounds at 13, so I got a fake ID card and entered. My dad and uncles had given me an edge, so having a boxing background made it easier because a lot of the older guys didn’t know how to fight.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I’m happy in Oklahoma. It’s closer to family. Nobody expects anything of you there.”
― Tommy Morrison
“It’s a big move from the ‘Tough Man’ circuit to professional boxing. When I turned pro, I had to play catch-up and was fighting almost twice a month until I had more than 20 fights under my belt.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I would walk into a room, and people would be like, ‘Hide the children. Here comes the guy with AIDS.’ That’s very demeaning, and it really hurts your spirit.”
― Tommy Morrison
“People need to cut me a break.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I could always fight overseas, but who wants to do that? They’d really have to make it worth my while.”
― Tommy Morrison
“HIV changed my life, but I think I’ve accepted it. I don’t even think about it unless someone brings it up.”
― Tommy Morrison
“The fact that there’s never been a single documented case in the history of this planet of anyone ever contracting HIV in the ring seems to me like a leg perfectly strong enough to stand on in terms of a lawsuit.”
― Tommy Morrison
“Very few fighters get a chance to come back.”
― Tommy Morrison
“My life out of the ring caught up with me.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I’ve always been painted as this party animal.”
― Tommy Morrison
“It took me awhile to learn the public eye was on me.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I’m a white guy in a black sport. I really forget about it until someone asks me about it. I’m simply competing in a sport that I love.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I saw a chance to make the 1988 Olympic boxing team and forgot all about football.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I would welcome a Mike Tyson fight with open arms.”
― Tommy Morrison
“Friendships can go only so far.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life.”
― Tommy Morrison
“People thought I was crazy for fighting Michael Bentt.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I like fighting people that scare me a little bit. People that scare me seem to motivate me, and when you motivate me, you get the best performance out of me.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I don’t ever think in terms of losing. That’s not even a possibility. I’ve been beaten once, and I don’t ever want to experience that again.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I am not a big fan of Mike Tyson. I almost idolized him for what he did in the ring – he was such a great fighter. But his behavior out of the ring… he needed to realize he was in the public eye, and there is a responsibility.”
― Tommy Morrison
“When I was 19, my heart wasn’t in it. I hated training.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I was one of the most popular fighters of my era.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I didn’t have the greatest equipment or the greatest facilities. I would see people with new shoes and better cars. I knew what I wanted and what I had to do to get what I wanted. I became a very Spartan person at a young age because of that.”
― Tommy Morrison
“The one thing that made me somewhat of an animal is I didn’t have anything growing up.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I think there’s a lot of people out there who, if George Foreman had to get beat, I’m the one fighter they would like to see beat him.”
― Tommy Morrison
“People don’t like to see a sloppy fight, to see heavyweights wallow around. They like to see exciting fighters.”
― Tommy Morrison
“Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been confident of coming out on top in a brawl, but the ring is a lot different from a bar. That’s been my problem.”
― Tommy Morrison
“Boy, I wouldn’t want to live in L.A.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I’m going to bring the championship home to Kansas City.”
― Tommy Morrison
“There’s a family tradition of fighting in the Kansas City Golden Gloves. My older brother, Tim, did, and so did my father’s two youngest brothers, Trent and Troy. They all won the Golden Gloves. So when my mother asked me to keep the tradition going, I did.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I thought I had the potential to be a better fighter than I’d ever be a football player. Besides, it was something my father always wanted me to do. He told me since I was a little kid I was a born fighter.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I boxed until I got interested in other things. My first car. Girls.”
― Tommy Morrison
“I was the first player at Jay to play four years varsity. As a frosh, I was a punter. From my soph through senior years, I started as a linebacker and tight end and was all-state as a senior.”
― Tommy Morrison
“Ray Mercer has the heart of a lion and a great chin.”
― Tommy Morrison
“You don’t knock Ray Mercer out with one or two shots. You have to make him quit.”
― Tommy Morrison
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