Heavyweight Best Quotes

WHEN IT’S ALL OVER, there’s one final talk I want to make—to the press. When they gather in front of me, it’s hard to forget that nearly all of them had considered me a hoax. They start to shoot questions at me, but I cut them off: “Hold it! Hold it!” I say. “You’ve all had a chance to say what you thought before the fight. Now it’s my turn. You all said Sonny Liston would kill me. You said he was better than Jack Johnson or Jack Dempsey, even Joe Louis, and you ranked them the best heavyweights of all time. You kept writing how Liston whipped Floyd Patterson twice, and when I told you I would get Liston in eight, you wouldn’t believe it. Now I want all of you to tell the whole world while all the cameras are on us, tell the world that I’m The Greatest.” There’s a silence. “Who’s The Greatest?” I ask them. Nobody answers. They look down at their pads and microphones. “Who’s The Greatest?” I say again. They look up with solemn faces, but the room is still silent. “For the LAST TIME!” I shout. “All the eyes of the world on us. You just a bunch of hypocrites. I told you I was gonna get Liston and I got him. All the gamblers had me booked eight-to-one underdog. I proved all of you wrong. I shook up the world! Tell me who’s The Greatest! WHO IS THE GREATEST?” They hesitate for a minute, and finally in a dull tone they all answer, “You are.” •

The early Seventies were a gold rush for double-vinyl samplers from Sixties heavyweights—the Stones’ 1971 Hot Rocks, the Kinks’ 1972 Kink Kronikles, the Doors’ 1972 Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine, the Beach Boys’ 1974 Endless Summer. Best of all: Bob Dylan’s 1971 Greatest Hits Volume II, with virtually no hits, just deep cuts chosen by the artist.

I know that everyone in this room, Bernie Fain included, thinks I'm some kind of a nut with my so-called fixation on this vampire thing. OK, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he only thinks he is. But there are things here that can't be explained away by so-called common sense. Not even Bernie's report can explain some of them. 'I was at the hospital yesterday.' I looked directly at Butcher. 'Your own people fired maybe fifty or sixty rounds at him, some at point-blank range. How come this man never even slowed down? How come a man seventy years old can outrun police cars for more than fifteen blocks? How come when he gets clubbed on the head he doesn't bleed like other people? Look at these photos! There's a gash on his forehead... and whatever is trickling down from the cut is clear... it isn't blood. 'How come three great, big, burly hospital orderlies weighing an estimated total of nearly seven-hundred fifty pounds couldn't bring one, skinny one-hundred sixty pound man to his knees? How come an ex-boxer, a light-heavyweight not long out of the ring, couldn't even faze him with his best punch, a right hook that should have broken his jaw? 'Face it. Whether it's science, witchcraft or black magic, this character has got something going for him you don't know anything about. He doesn't seem to feel pain. Or get winded. And he doesn't seem to be very frightened by guns, or discouraged by your efforts to trap him. 'Look at these photos! Look at that face! That isn't fear there. It's hate. Pure hate! This man is evil incarnate. He is insane and he may be something even worse although you'd laugh at me because I have no scientific documentation to back me up. Hell, even Regenhaus and Mokurji have all but confirmed that he sucks blood. 'Whatever he is, he's been around a long time and this seems to be the closest any police force has come to putting the finger on him. If you want to go on operating the way you've been doing by treating him like an ordinary man, go ahead. But, I'll bet you any amount of money you come up empty handed again. If you try to catch him at night he'll get away just like he did last night. He'll...' 'Jesus Christ!' bellowed Butcher. 'This son of a bitch has diarrhea of the mouth. Can't one of you people shut him up?

The team then prepared for climbing big mountains by climbing a few small mountains, much as a heavyweight boxer prepares for a title bout by beating up several children.

Another great resource is podcasts, but these generally take time to sift through. I think the best all-around podcast comes from the heavyweights at Andreessen Horowitz (stylized as “a16z”). The a16z podcast has become a true force in understanding any given sector through interviews with thought leaders and great entrepreneurs in their space. I began to develop an interest in the bitcoin blockchain protocol, how it works, and if a blockchain network independent of bitcoin (or any other currency) could really exist in the long-term. Aside from the incredible reporting and research coming out of the CoinDesk news site, there seems to be no better resource than a16z’s interview with the CEO of Chain, Adam Ludwin. In a16z’s “Blockchain vs./ and Bitcoin,” Adam explained what bitcoin is, its limitations, and how blockchain can prosper and create decentralized networks for other financial instruments and stores of value like merchant-issued currency (gift card transfer), airtime on a mobile phone, energy credits on a grid and even tokens for machine-to-machine communication as we enter into the internet-of-things (IoT) and the autonomous vehicle era. The Product Hunt, Rocketship.fm and Accidental Creative podcasts are also not bad places to start.