Damien Hughes

That was the criteria of which I viewed him as a great because what was interesting with him was that there was all kinds of calls for him to come back and fight.

And when I'd interviewed him at the time, he was like, I knew if I'd stayed in Boston where we'd grown up, I would have come back.

because everyone referred to me as a champ.

So he decided to emigrate to Italy, spoke no Italian, but he decided to go and reinvent himself as an actor in Italy because he recognized he needed to do something different with his life rather than stay in the sport where his diminished physical gifts were gonna cause him damage.

So I've often long admired those that know how to plan for after the final whistle goes.

So the fact that we've been able to speak to other more contemporary athletes now and understand that actually this isn't as easy as you'd imagine, like Schumacher did, like we've seen so many boxers, Tyson Fury has come out of retirement.

Oh, that's a good question.

Have you turned... Well...

I mean, it's a really surprising one, isn't it?

Because people often, if you think about why people stay in it, there's often like that longevity of just trying to eke out a few more years on a lucrative contract or... Excellent feeling, Damien.

No, well, if you take the Michael Jordan one, I think the interesting thing for him was that he lost his dad, didn't he?

So then his dad was kidnapped and then later found dead.

So he went to pursue that career in baseball because he felt he was honouring his father's legacy.

And then he came back when he realised how difficult it was in another sport.

So I think maybe that gave him a chance on mental reset.

The Michael Phelps one, you said it was a case of burnout and depression.

I think George Foreman...

He came back and at first, I feel uncomfortable because he was such a terrifying heavyweight in the 70s when he first emerged on the scene.

Like, if anyone ever wants to go back and just watch a real one-sided beating, have a look at his destruction job he does on Joe Frazier, where he just knocks him down something like eight times.

He was genuinely phenomenal.