Top 60 Sugar Ray Leonard Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Within our dreams and aspirations we find our opportunities.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

2. “You have to know you can win. You have to think you can win. You have to feel you can win.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

3. “Success is attaining your dream while helping others to benefit from that dream materializing.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

4. “I want to be great, something special.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

5. “Everything you want to know about a fighter is in his eyes. The look in his eyes tells the truth.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

6. “People can do more than they ever believe they can do. Physically, mentally, academically. You have to be pushed. It hurts. But it’s worth it, and it’s a great thing.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

7. “I always expect unexpected challenges.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

8. “Boxing’s a poor man’s sport. We can’t afford to play golf or tennis. It is what it is. It’s kept so many kids off the street. It kept me off the street.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

9. “The only way for a fighter to get back in shape is to fight his way back.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

10. “Spread your love and fly.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

11. “I’ve always believed that you can be whatever you want to be if you are willing to sacrifice and dedicate yourself.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

12. “My toughest fight was myself. For me to disclose and let things out was not easy because we don’t want to seem weak or like we are different, but I learned that it’s okay.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

13. “Duran always disturbs me. The guy is just weird. Before our first fight, both Duran and his wife gave my wife the finger.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

14. “To be the best, you need to spend hours and hours and hours running, hitting the speed bag, lifting weights and focusing on training.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

15. “It’s hard to talk about yourself.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

16. “Sugar Ray Robinson was probably the greatest pound-for-pound fighter of all time.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

17. “Aaron Pryor wants to get into the ring with me. He wants to be able to retire, and he will. For health reasons.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

18. “Someone once said there was a comparison between Sugar Ray Leonard and Sugar Ray Robinson. Believe me, there’s no comparison. Sugar Ray Robinson was the greatest.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

19. “While each of us faces enormous challenges every day, it’s not the sins we commit that will define us, its how we respond to them.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

20. “I fought tall fighters, short fighters, strong fighters, slow fighters, sluggers and boxers. It was either learn or get knocked off.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

21. “I think an athlete should be honest. I know it’s difficult, but if a guy knocked me on my can, I couldn’t very well say, I slipped.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

22. “It’s different when you become a professional, because you also have to become a businessman, and that takes something away from it.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

23. “I remember all the important fights. Vividly. In detail.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

24. “Boxing brings out my aggressive instinct, not necessarily a killer instinct.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

25. “I consider myself blessed. I consider you blessed. We’ve all been blessed with God-given talents. Mine just happens to be beating people up.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

26. “Inactivity is the biggest sin in boxing.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

27. “A fighter never knows when it’s the last bell. He doesn’t want to face that.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

28. “I’m a free agent. I haven’t allowed any promoters to have exclusive options on my fight. I don’t need a promoter.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

29. “Boxing is the ultimate challenge. There’s nothing that can compare to testing yourself the way you do every time you step in the ring.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

30. “I’m a competitor and a very proud man. If a guy beats me once, he’ll have to do it again to make me believe him.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

31. “My very best memory of Montreal was the moment inside the Olympic arena when I was waiting under the stadium and those majestic gates opened up. It was a whole other world.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

32. “I lay around and wonder why you were always there for me.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

33. “Bruce Lee was an artist and, like him, I try to go beyond the fundamentals of my sport. I want the public to see a knockout in the making.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

34. “I had a drug problem. I’d go to parties, take a leak, and there was cocaine right there. I was 25 when it started, rich, famous, and retired.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

35. “In Italy, I had an Afro, and a lot of the kids came up and felt my hair. It really was funny. I wish I had understood Italian.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

36. “I found boxing when I was 14 years old. I went down to the gym because my brother, who used to beat me up all the time, introduced me to boxing. I found boxing to be a sport that I felt safe in because I controlled what was in those four squares.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

37. “Boxing was not something I truly enjoyed. Like a lot of things in life, when you put the gloves on, it’s better to give than to receive.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

38. “It is wonderful. It truly is. It is the only thing that is real! It’s you against me, it’s challenging another guy’s manhood. With gloves. Words cannot describe that feeling of being a man, of being a gladiator, of being a warrior. It’s irreplaceable.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

39. “Before I fight, I always pray that no one gets hurt.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

40. “The Ricky Hatton that beat Kostya Tszyu in 2005 can beat Floyd Mayweather, he was so focused and in such amazing physical shape that he would have given anybody at that level a tough time.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

41. “They say that I’m stubborn, and my wife says that, too, but it’s paid off so far.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

42. “Were all given some sort of skill in life. Mine just happens to be beating up on people.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

43. “I’m so opposite of my profession. No one – particularly my mother and father – ever thought I was going to be a boxer because I always felt that football and baseball were too dangerous. I was just such a quiet kid.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

44. “I’ve never believed in tying myself up in a long-range contract, and I’ve been very outspoken on that subject.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

45. “Holyfield is nothing but class, and I think he’s a breath of fresh air for the sport.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

46. “I wouldnt change anything because the mistakes and the hurt are as important as all the great fights. They made me who I am today.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

47. “Tommy Hearns seemed like an indestructible machine, so to beat him, I think that was my defining moment, the pinnacle.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

48. “I tried the gloves on, and it just felt so natural. From that moment I became so embedded in boxing. I found a friend in boxing.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

49. “I wanted to be like Bruce Jenner.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard

50. “I was painfully initiated into boxing, because the guys I fought were a lot bigger than me.”

— Sugar Ray Leonard