Fighters remember their greatest sports moments outside of boxing.

From espn.com


Joe Calzaghe: That's easy. The happiest I've ever been in my life was when I scored my first goal ever in a league football [soccer] game. I was 9 years old, playing for a team called Pentwynmawr in the under-10 league. My daddy had said he'd give me 50 pence when I scored my first goal. We were down 4-0 late in a game against a team called Cefn Forest, when I kicked at the ball from about 6 feet out. It sort of scrambled over the line and I went crazy. I ran down the field, waving my arms like I'd just won the World Cup. My coach called me over and said, "We're losing. What are you so happy about?" But I'd scored my first goal.


Mark Breland: I played Pop Warner [youth] football [in Brooklyn] when I was 15 years old. Quarterback and, believe it or not, defensive end. Both ways, almost every down. I weighed 120 pounds and was on a team called the Garrity Knights. We were playing a team from Queens in the New York City championship game. I didn't throw any touchdown passes, but we had a good offensive line and our running game was working. At the end of the game, they were on our 5-yard line, last play of the game. We were winning by a touchdown. They ran it to my side of the field and I shut them down. Game over. It's hard to describe how good that felt. I loved football; football was my game. I just couldn't put on enough weight to get to the next level.


Paulie Malignaggi: My father was a professional soccer player who left my mother when my brother and I were young. My mother didn't let us play organized sports because she didn't want us to turn out like him, so I was never part of an organized league or team. But I was a good athlete on the playground and in the street. There's one game I still remember. I was 16 years old, playing basketball in Dyker Park [in Brooklyn]. Me and some friends were up against some other guys. The way it worked was, you played 'til one team had 21 points. Anything outside the arc counted for two points; everything else was one. It was a heated game, full court, five-on-five, both sides talking a lot of trash. And I had a hot hand. I hit shot after shot from the outside. I couldn't miss. One of the guys on the other team said, "Oh, he's just a chucker." He moved up to guard me tighter. So I stopped 10 feet outside the arc and put up a jumper that went in. I made something like seven shots from outside the arc, and we won, I think it was, 21-16. When I started boxing, I gave up basketball. I didn't want to turn an ankle or do something else to injure myself. Now I do my road work running around Dyker Park. I think about that day once in a while. "He's just a chucker." I'll never forget that. But that day, I was chucking them in.


Kelly Pavlik: I played a lot of baseball when I was growing up, almost all of it as a catcher. I was good, but I pretty much knew that I didn't have what it takes to get to the major leagues. When I was 15, I was playing for Salem in the Pony League state all-star tournament. We ran through the tournament. I caught all of the early games. Right before the championship game, I said to the coach: "Let me pitch." He said OK. I went out, struck out six or seven guys, pitched a shutout and hit a home run. I was on top of the world that day.


Larry Holmes: When I was young, I played football and I wrestled a lot. The wrestling was at a youth center in Easton [Pa.]. I've still got a picture of me in my wrestling uniform. I was a skinny little kid, 99 pounds. It's hard to believe that I wrestled at 99 pounds. My right arm weighs more than that now. We'd wrestle teams from other youth centers near Easton. I only lost a few times. Football, I played fullback and defensive tackle at Shaw Junior High School in Easton. In seventh grade [age 12], I was good enough to make the ninth-grade team. I never made it past that because I dropped out of school the next year. I wasn't the fastest one on the team, but I wasn't the slowest one either. And I was strong. They used me to run in the extra points after touchdowns. I didn't really have a moment of glory in either sport. That came for me later on in boxing. But with wrestling and football, the practices, the competition, hanging out with the other kids, I had a lot of good times.


Shane Mosley: When I was growing up [in Pomona, Calif.], there was a public pool in Ganesha Park near where I lived. The summer when I was 8 years old, I went there every day. I watched people going off the diving board, and I decided I wanted to do a one-and-a-half forward somersault. I was the type of kid who would set a goal for himself and then do everything I could to accomplish it. With the one-and-a-half forward somersault, I tried and I tried and I just couldn't do it. So I kept trying. No one taught me how. I learned by watching other people. Finally, near the end of the summer, I did it. That felt so good. It didn't matter whether or not anyone else saw it. I did it for myself. And then, being me, I started trying to do a double forward somersault.

 

i like paulie's

 

haha