“If you want to be a champion, you cannot have any outside negative
influence coming in to affect you. If I get emotionally involved with a
girl, it can have a negative effect on my mind and destroy my workouts.
Therefore I have to cut my emotions off and be cold in a way. Do this
with the rest of things. If someone …steals my car right now, I don’t
care. I can’t be bothered with that. All I can do is call the insurance
agency and they’ll laugh about it. I trained myself for that and not to
let things go into my mind. When my father died, my mother
called me on the phone and said, “Your father died.” This was two
months before a contest. She asked me to come home to the funeral and I
said “No – It’s too late. He is dead and nothing can be done.Sorry I
can’t come home.”