Joe Calzaghe

At 14, 15, everyone at school stopped talking to me, and I went completely into my shell. Basically, I'd be hiding. I had no friends. I hated it.

The perfect fighter has never been born and never will be.

I've beaten all contenders for 11 years. I'm not a robot; I'm fed up. My body's tired of it. I'm 36.

When I was about 12, I realised I wasn't going to make it as a top footballer, but I won my first British ABA title at 13. From then on, I wanted to be a world champion.

You think that after becoming world champion, you're going to be a massive superstar with lots of lucrative bouts against great fighters, but that never materialised for me.

My mum is the opposite of my dad. She's a very private person, very shy and totally against boxing. She never watched any of my fights live. She hated me doing it.

My father was a cocky, long-haired musician, a songwriter.

I do like to travel.

I liked 'The Office' when it was on.

I think we have a normal father-and-son relationship. But like any other relationship, we have our differences. But we always seem to work out our differences. Believe it or not, our personalities are similar. We're both fiery and passionate.

Beating Chris Eubank in 1997 was a great win and the toughest fight of my life, and beating Jeff Lacy was great, too. But Mikkel Kessler topped it, winning all the belts and fighting in front of all those fans in my home town.

It's not just a trainer - as a man, my dad was unbelievable. Even outside boxing, he was my friend as well. We were boxer and trainer in the gym, but as soon as that bell goes, we'd have a cup of tea, and we'd go on about normal life. We would just leave that bit behind. That's how we kept going.