The Truth of Old School Tough by Mark Hatmaker

In my daily gig as old school combat archeologist I come across countless stories, tales, anecdotes and reportage claiming that “The Old-Timers were tougher than ‘these kids today.’”


The flip-side to that glorification of the past argument is that “these kids today” get the gift of standing on all of that accumulated old-school wisdom and the added bonus of attaching modern day bells and whistles to make today’s combat cadre tougher than the prior generations.


So which story is true?


Were the bad-asses of yore the tip of the top?


Or…is it today’s crop of combatateers that prove the creamiest?


This often leads to the old chestnut of a question “Who would win between [insert past legend and legend in the making]?”


There is simply no way to conduct such past and present comparisons with any sort of scientific rigor without aid of a time-machine.


So, until we are provided with such a chronal-distortion device are we left without an answer to the “Who was tougher, the old-timers or the youngsters” question?


Or, perhaps not.


In my mind the best evidence for such comparisons would be to look to experienced eyes that have had long practice in evaluating the given endeavor.


Say, an old boxing trainer that has been around and seen fighters over several decades.

Someone like Jimmy DeForest who trained such legends as Jack Dempsey, Stanley Ketchel, James J. Jeffries, Joe Gans, George Dixon, Joe Walcott, Kid McCoy, Tommy Ryan, Philadelphia Pal Moore, Jack Sharkey and Luis Angel Firpo.



I wager Mr. DeForest holds an opinion with a bit of evaluative heft to it.



Let’s turn the floor over to Mr. DeForest.


“[In the early days] the fighters came to the ring properly conditioned to do their best for the particular distance they were required to go—six, eight, ten, or fifteen rounds. For the most part they were fighters toughened by far more rigorous training methods than are employed today, and able to battle hard for fifteen rounds and be fresh at the finish.


“There were no ‘hot-house’ fighters a generation ago. The men didn’t have the money for expensive camps and imported chefs. They trained in cold barns, and when they wanted a shower, they stood under a big can in which holes had been punched while someone poured in a bucket of cold water from above. Rigorous treatment, but it made tough bodies. Men would go fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five rounds and show scarcely a mark afterwards. Nowadays blood flows freely in almost every six round go.”


Mr. DeForest penned those words in 1930. This before the age of air-conditioning [or “air-cooling” as it was termed then], efficient heating, or anything that we encounter in even the least well-equipped commercial gym of today.


Imagine how much more shade he would throw at today’s training environments.


Imagine the look in the eyes from that stable of fighters as they view our comfy “Boxes” from the vantage point of their bare-bones proving grounds.


Probably the same look a hungry coyote has when it sees the pampered pet let out into the manicured lawn to relieve itself and get back inside where it’s all nice and cozy.


There are many such accounts of old hands who have seen boxers, wrestlers, and other stalwart sportive endeavors across decades providing the same evaluation.


Now, there is no guarantee that Mr. DeForest and those w
ho sympathize with his opinion are not simply engaging in glorified nostalgia.

Arguments on the side of the newer crop will point to improvements in sports records in many athletic endeavors over the last few decades.



But…sports historian David Epstein in his masterful The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance points to the fact [fact, not opinion] that many of those “gains” are by dint of rule-changes and improvements in gear.

For example, Jesse Owens made his August 3^rd, 1936 record-breaking 10.3 second 100-meter dash on a force-eating cinder-track using a garden trowel to “dig out sprint blocks” in shoes we would find “not up to snuff” in today’s engineered footwear market.


Today’s sprinters have ergonomically designed shoes, scientifically designed running surfaces, and other tweaked variables to tick up the record-times. 


Mr. Epstein shows how not just Owens in the realm of track and field but athletes in many endeavors would still be hosses in today’s game,


My two cents is they would be bigger Hosses. We’ve got to consider that many of these folks were training with gear and under circumstances that even today’s amateur weekend athletes would consider beneath them.


Again, this comparison across decades is best made by those who have serious experience across decades.


Let’s look to this Old vs. Now debate in another domain, that of stock-car racing.


“Earnhardt has one style—all out and hard-chargin’. It comes from the old days, from guys like Junior Johnson and Curtis Turner. Years ago there were ten or fifteen guys driving that way. Now there’s Dale.”-NASCAR legend Richard Childress.


Mr. Earnhardt himself on old-school tough.


“I’m patterned from the old drivers. All those guys I watched racing growing up were tough old boys. That’s where I get my aggressive, hard style.”


How about another legendary driver on the old-timers of the sport?


“In the old days, you had to be more than good. You had to be good and tough.”—Richard Petty



And one more glance at the past of stock car racing from another legend Ralph Moody. As you read this one think of today’s razor-honed aerodynamically engineered cars, roll-bars, seat-harnesses and fire-suits. [BTW-Monkey in this quote is literal, not slang. This happened.]


“Tim Flock would drive in a race car with a monkey. His brother Fonty ran Darlington in shorts and a T-shirt.”


Those who have experience over transitional decades seem to give weight to the “The Old Ones were tougher” argument.


It is with the insight and wisdom of such eyewitnesses and such brilliant historical analyses as by David Epstein that I heartily encourage combat athletes to give a good deal of credence to “what was.” Not merely in the technique and tactical sense but in the work ethos, the attitude, the balls and ovaries to the wall approach to life.


Two more old-timers’ observations to bring us home.


“In the early days, not all the drivers were moonshiners but they all had that same devil-may-care moonshiner’s attitude.”-Richard Petty


And to bring it back to combat, this is journalist Heywood Broun observing an old boxer destroy a young challenger in 1922.


“Tradition carries a nasty wallop.”


To Old-School Devil-May-Care Moonshiner’s Attitude and a Nasty Wallop!


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