Champion Status Quotes

People treat you one way when you're champion, but when you're not the champion, everything changes. People treat you different.

Klitschko was the reigning champion for a decade and regarded by many as one of the greatest heavyweights of all time. I'm never going to face another opponent with that legacy.

Olympic champions should be 100 per cent athletes who have made the sacrifices.

Winning the belt is one thing. But you're not really a champion until you defend it.

Charles Martin, we watched him. He won the IBF championship of the world, but we don't think he is anything special.

I want to be a champion. I want to be a long-reigning featherweight champion. I want to be known in the history books: my name everywhere as a champion. And then, later on in my career, when I start getting good, then I can start doing the exhibition matches for money and stuff.

Look at guys like Demetrious Johnson, who's the pound-for-pound best fighter in the world. Why isn't he on the largest pay scale? Why are there people that aren't even champions making more money?

Jon Jones is at the top for a long time, can't say enough about him.

For me, it's about the legacy, being the best fighter and a champion who takes all comers. I'm going to make more money outside the Octagon, after my career, than I make in it. But it's making it difficult for me to achieve my goals when I have unnecessary stumbling blocks like my promoter saying damaging comments about me.

I have taken every amount of creative liberty and freedom that I can get and I've actually managed to push it. I would say being the champion gives me that freedom because you really get a little more carte blanche.

Ofili is still a champion. It would be a huge mistake to think otherwise.

I'd love to be the Ali of women's boxing, to retire as the greatest.

The only reason I want to climb up the rankings - beating the champion and beating guys in the top five - those are the guys that get the endorsements and get the most money and get paid the most. That's the only reason why.

I just want to leave a mark on the sport of boxing so people talk about me like they talk about the other great champions before me. That's my goal before I retire.

There's a responsibility to represent female MMA that comes with being the champion, just as there's a responsibility to represent and promote the show when you coach TUF.

Part of me didn't know if Australia wanted its champion to be gay.

A lot of people, once they become champion, they relax, kind of sit in the position and try to enjoy it. But I feel like everything I've ever worked for could be lost at any moment. I work harder and harder and harder, because I want to be farther ahead with every fight, and not worrying about these girls catching up to me.

What's the point of fighting in the UFC if it isn't to become the champion?

Even when the heavyweight champion was a fighter of limited ability, he was still the heavyweight champion of the world.

I'm interested to work with Lucha Underground and as champion that would put me in the mix to work with them.

I never expected to compete at home in a UCI women's race - let alone as world champion.

Cain has proven himself as the best heavyweight of all time, and it would be hard to strip him.

You can win all the tournaments you want, but the majors are what you're remembered for. It's how you're measured as a champion in our sport. The majors are where it's at.

When you're watching people in non-title fights making four times the amount of money that a champion makes, it takes away the flavor of being a champion.

Usually, you become a star and then a champion.