How Mr. T’s faith helped him beat cancer: ‘You knock me down, I’m coming up again’

Mr. T didn’t let cancer knock him out.

The action hero was diagnosed with T-cell lymphoma in 1995, and his faith guided him through the battle, he said Monday on The Hoda Kotb Show.

Years earlier, the wrestler-turned-actor had connected with young cancer patients who visited the set of his 1980s TV show The A-Team with the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

“If I couldn’t call on that same God I told the kids to believe in, If I couldn’t call on that same God that I preached in churches about, then that meant I was a liar and I was a phony,” said Mr. T, 63.

“When cancer came, I went to the Book of Job. It was a test of my faith. That’s all it was,” he added. “I’m in the knock-down business ’cause I play football, I box, I wrestle. So you knock me down, I’m coming up again. That’s why they call it fighting cancer. You got to get serious. You don’t play with it. You don’t p—y-foot around it.”

The Hoda Kotb Show airs live Mondays and Wednesdays at 2 pm ET on SiriusXM TODAY Show Radio (Ch. 108).

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