Brin-Jonathan Butler

Trejo is one of the oldest boxing gyms in Cuba; it's outdoor, and every great champion the country has produced has passed through and was forged in the open air.

You can't learn to take a punch. Whether you have a glass chin or you don't, the only way of finding out is having it land.

Cuban eyes often look close to tears. Tears never seem far away because both their pain and their joy are always so close to the surface.

We define ourselves as intelligent. That's odd, because we're doing the definition - We're creating our own definition and saying, 'We are intelligent!'

We were very young in Duran, and to get pushed in a corner can be very difficult to get out of.

My first career ambitions involved turning into a boy; I intended to be either a railway guard or a knight errant.