There was no way any man could knock me out. Every dentist I've ever been to, all around the world, has said that my jaw was denser than any they'd ever seen.
I've never known of a fighter who conditioned themselves to absorb blows the way I did before fights. So if there was any man who was not going to be knocked out, it was me.
No man can absorb a good body punch. So that was always my secondary target, the body. My primary target was the end of the fight.
If I threw to the body, it was always a good punch. So I never threw to the body unless I knew it was going to be a good punch.
You break a man down to the body. That's basically what the crack is!
But your mind is focussed on the target, the target being to get to the end of the fight... being in front on points.
The most important thing was to get my jab working before my opponent got his jab working, finding all four corners of the ring before my opponent found them; getting my reflexes working as early as possible.
Then it was landing about two good body shots per round for a few rounds.
You never aim for a knockout - you aim for the end of the fight. And if your opponent makes the mistake of leaving himself in position to be knocked out - then you knock him out.
What one must understand is that 9 in 10 knockouts are the mistake of the fighter being knocked out.
There's no reasoning behind pawing a jab, even one. If you can reach your opponent, you can also hit him with a sharp jab.
It's kind of like sparring, as in when I see boxers holding punches in a sparring ring - that for me is nonsensical and a waste of time.
Occasionally an exceptional boxer will become so good that they no longer need to throw punches! Floyd Mayweather, for example. I got to that point at one point.
When Floyd boxes again, though, his reflexes won't be the same.
In 200 minutes of world championship boxing in 1992, I can count on my fingers how many punches I took.
My style was my style, it was all mine. I taught myself how to box. Maximo Pierret in New York taught me how to fight inside, about inside fighting.
Beyond that it was all me, in many respects.
Adonis Torres in New York - in many ways my mentor - suffered a stroke when I was 4 and 0 as a professional boxer and I was looking for a new gym or new job.
He passed on in October 1987, but had encouraged me to carry on boxing and go with trust rather than names.
Anyway, I found myself back in England, found Barry Hearn and promised him that I wouldn't lose a fight.
I went on to win my next 39 fights, 19 of which world championship fights. Me and Barry trusted eachother.
I fought up at cruiserweight, out in Cairo and against Calzaghe; because Roy Jones Jr expressed no interest to engage me.
My natural character is to grab the bull by the horns, as was more than evident in my boxing career, so of course I wanted that particular fight (against Roy Jones).
A fight like that (against Roy Jones) and fights against the likes of James Toney I cannot comment on because they didn't happen.
I wouldn't have matched Jones or Toney for talent or technique, in my view. But I had a ring intelligence and an integrity that may have evened it up.
D
J First quote is rubbish about having the most dense jaw, how is that supposed to prevent you getting knocked out. For a man with a super dense jaw he seemed to be seeing at lot of dentists around the world.....