I remember fighting this kid from Jamaica in Miami. It was about my ninth fight. He was a lot.

I remember in the first round, I hit him with a right hand and he didn’t blink. I was like, “Oh fuck, this is going to be a long night.” There was a lot of pressure on me because I was fighting at home.

I remember in the fifth round I turned to my corner and my trainer said, “Goddamn it, you ought to go back to acting!” Then he slapped me and said, “Go in there, and knock him out.” And I almost did. But I can’t believe that he actually said that to me.

There was one point, in the fourth, when I was getting my ass kicked a little bit, and a funny thought came to me in the middle of it. I was against the ropes, getting a body shot, and I went, “Oh fuck, that hurt.”

And I’m thinking, “What the fuck am I doing here?” I mean, I actually thought, “How the fuck did I end up here?” After my last fight, it was like the 11th – I only had 11 fights in four-and-a-half years – the pressure became too much because I was known as an actor.

I had a record where I had to start fighting a better quality of fighters if I wanted to take that next step up. But it would’ve been another three years fighting and the damage… So I made that decision to stop.

But it was very hard to get work for three or four years because I was unbondable and I think that it scared a lot of people.