65 Replies to “They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To”
meet me at the bike racks
“I believe one of the best life lessons one can draw from (sporting) combat is respect for others, discovery of one’s own limits, and an appropriate understanding of risk/reward with real consequences.” – hardboiled
Verily. In my experience, the classmates of mine who fought at a young age have more of a sense of honour as grown ups, and are less likely to overrate the weight of their *feelings* in disagreements, whereas those who never fought are more likely to fight with their fingernails, proverbially speaking, in verbal disagreements, because they never faced consequences, during their developmental years, for doing so.
When I was in elementary school in the 60’s there were semi-regular, after-school fistfights – pre-arranged, scheduled – at a churchyard near the school. The parents in the neighborhood couldn’t possibly have been unaware of what was going on, given that half the school gathered to watch, but no one ever intervened. Today, there’d probably be police involved, and counseling for the participants and the traumatized onlookers, and it would probably be on The National: “Tonight: a disturbing incident in a quiet neighbourhood in Edmonton involving violence between two eleven-year old children, as hundreds of kid cheered them on…”
Some of the happiest/proudest moments of my childhood involved smacking down older kids who had been trying to intimidate me. I think it doesn’t occur to a lot of people that if you forbid boys from working these things out in the natural, age-old way, you are in effect *allowing* harassment.
Fighting aside, even things like the riotously-fun king-of-the-snowpiles recess melees are now often deemeded dangerous and too aggressive by the nanny-types. It’s too bad.
aaron…what’s your point? Do you know for a fact that there are no ‘activist’ here on the blog?
You’re sure everyone is sitting back and taking it?
What a twit of a comment. I don’t owe you an explaination of the number of times I have done my part.
And Kate…your reference to ‘don’t make e’m like they used to’…agreed! That is a very complimentary picture of Dempsey…not hard to look at! lol
Those 2 boys remind me of some Spanky and Alflfa shows.Fun stuff!
“Some of the happiest/proudest moments of my childhood involved smacking down older kids who had been trying to intimidate me. I think it doesn’t occur to a lot of people that if you forbid boys from working these things out in the natural, age-old way, you are in effect *allowing* harassment.”
Not only that, I believe the inevitable result is a much more dangerous outburst far in the future by people who haven’t had a way to vent(trench coats anyone?); and, the loss of the unwritten rules of a “fair fight”. If you were never taught the rules, you can not be expected to know and apply them.
Sed omissis quidem divinis exhortationibus illum magis Græcum versiculum secularis sententiæ sibi adhibent, “Qui fugiebat, rursus prœliabitur”, ut et rursus forsitan fugiat.
— Quintus Septimius Tertullianus in De Fuga in Persecutione
There’s more than a bit of truth to that, Vitruvius, but in a battle/war context. In a civic/family/civilian context those who flee are, on balance of probability, less likely to fight in the future.
Note also that the essence of the quote – roughly “he who flees will fight again” – contains the operative word “again,” which indicates that there was fighting before there was flight.
Indiana Homez: I hear you on the “trench coat” thing. There’s a lot of sedentary kids who’ve had the aggression centers in their brains rewired by murdering/smiting/slashing thousands of opponents in video games. A lot of these kids who’ve never been in a real-world fight are nonetheless limbicly inured to final victory in the context of violence. A couple of fistfights are probably a lot less harmful to a boy’s growing brain than ten-thousand hours of virtual slaughter.
Exactly, EBD, or as Scarron said, “Qui fuit peut
revenir aussi; Qui meurt il n’en est pas ainsi.”
Jack Dempsey was only about 180 pounds and 5’11”.
And yet he had much larger guys like Big Jess Willard down 6 times in the first round.
He had a boxing move called a “trigger step” that is rarely seen in the ring today. He said that anyone who spent 6 months working at this punch could knock out someone his own size and weight with one punch.
And one year of practice would allow a person to knock out a larger person with one punch.
It’s kind of an awkward move and takes practice. In the ring I’ve used it a couple of times with good effect.
In World War II Dempsey taught hand-to-hand combat to the Coast Guard.
Long before he was champ and even lighter in weight, he used to make money by promoting fights in barrooms around the mining towns in Colorado. He did this for quite a while.
He believed in training in unusual ways. He had a special cage built that forced him to stay in a crouch as he boxed. And he used to break training in order to work at different physical labor jobs, as he believed it integrated his movements.
I’m a little old to be competing in the boxing ring these days, but I wish I had started earlier and boxed longer.
In World War II, Navy aviation cadets were taught to box. This seemed to be counter-intuitive at first. How could someone in the cockpit of a plane find a use for boxing?
Turns out, boxing taught people to fight on when their head was reeling. It taught them to aggressivly take their planes into the combat arena. It taught them never to stop fighting.
I believe that boxing and wrestling are taught today in US military academies as a regular part of their curriculum for similar reasons.
I’ve always found it very difficult to stare down socialists, it’s so damn hard to get down that low.
My school didn’t have boxing. We had shooting. Fun! Added bonus, no early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Yeehaw 🙂
Never mind the karatay, Aaron. Teach ’em a -real- martial art.
This is just another night in my gym. We use headgear now, but that’s the only difference from 1930. Boxing is one of the only sports to run, unchanged, for 100 years, or more.
Homez- Your girls must be excited to hear female boxing is part of the Olympic Games from now on. Which club do they attend? I was in Regina last month for the Western Canadian Championships. There don’t seem to be as many girls as there were a few years ago.
As far as contact sports go, boxing is pretty safe, compared to football and hockey. It actually falls below soccer as far as statistics on head injury(concussion). What makes it so scary is the up close and personal aspect of it. Also, it’s a very lonely spot, inside those ropes. I used to get so nervous, my legs would almost give out.
I have to dissagree with the statement “they don’t make em like they used to”. I have some boys in the gym right now, that are every bit as tough as any I’ve ever seen, past or present. The human spirit is still strong in most kids, in fact, I see it getting stronger than it was when I was a kid. The 70s and 80s were a very bad period in Canadian history. I see more pride in our culture(in the west, at least), than I’ve seen for decades.
This would be considered child abuse today. The reality is that its a good idea for boys to take out their grievances against each other in a lawful physical manner. After its over you become friends, or thats how it used to be. Now they protect bullies. There is no responsibility anymore. The bureaucrat’s have diffused it to protect themselves.
A ring used to be part of any boy’s school.
We had one when the Navy League cadets where all male.
“When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.” — H. L. Mencken
dp
Hub City Boxing Club
I was very pleased to see how many women and girls are involved in the sport. My youngest was in wrestling for a year but I pulled her because of the dismal numbers of girls in her catagory. We’d travel hours to tourneys to find out she’s got 1 or 2 matches, sometimes none. For now it’s B-ball and Softball, wrestling will have to wait until high school.
Homez- Do you know, the coach at Hub City fought Lennox Lewis, as an amateur?
meet me at the bike racks
“I believe one of the best life lessons one can draw from (sporting) combat is respect for others, discovery of one’s own limits, and an appropriate understanding of risk/reward with real consequences.” – hardboiled
Verily. In my experience, the classmates of mine who fought at a young age have more of a sense of honour as grown ups, and are less likely to overrate the weight of their *feelings* in disagreements, whereas those who never fought are more likely to fight with their fingernails, proverbially speaking, in verbal disagreements, because they never faced consequences, during their developmental years, for doing so.
When I was in elementary school in the 60’s there were semi-regular, after-school fistfights – pre-arranged, scheduled – at a churchyard near the school. The parents in the neighborhood couldn’t possibly have been unaware of what was going on, given that half the school gathered to watch, but no one ever intervened. Today, there’d probably be police involved, and counseling for the participants and the traumatized onlookers, and it would probably be on The National: “Tonight: a disturbing incident in a quiet neighbourhood in Edmonton involving violence between two eleven-year old children, as hundreds of kid cheered them on…”
Some of the happiest/proudest moments of my childhood involved smacking down older kids who had been trying to intimidate me. I think it doesn’t occur to a lot of people that if you forbid boys from working these things out in the natural, age-old way, you are in effect *allowing* harassment.
Fighting aside, even things like the riotously-fun king-of-the-snowpiles recess melees are now often deemeded dangerous and too aggressive by the nanny-types. It’s too bad.
aaron…what’s your point? Do you know for a fact that there are no ‘activist’ here on the blog?
You’re sure everyone is sitting back and taking it?
What a twit of a comment. I don’t owe you an explaination of the number of times I have done my part.
And Kate…your reference to ‘don’t make e’m like they used to’…agreed! That is a very complimentary picture of Dempsey…not hard to look at! lol
Those 2 boys remind me of some Spanky and Alflfa shows.Fun stuff!
“Some of the happiest/proudest moments of my childhood involved smacking down older kids who had been trying to intimidate me. I think it doesn’t occur to a lot of people that if you forbid boys from working these things out in the natural, age-old way, you are in effect *allowing* harassment.”
Not only that, I believe the inevitable result is a much more dangerous outburst far in the future by people who haven’t had a way to vent(trench coats anyone?); and, the loss of the unwritten rules of a “fair fight”. If you were never taught the rules, you can not be expected to know and apply them.
Sed omissis quidem divinis exhortationibus illum magis Græcum
versiculum secularis sententiæ sibi adhibent, “Qui fugiebat, rursus
prœliabitur”, ut et rursus forsitan fugiat.
— Quintus Septimius Tertullianus in De Fuga in Persecutione
There’s more than a bit of truth to that, Vitruvius, but in a battle/war context. In a civic/family/civilian context those who flee are, on balance of probability, less likely to fight in the future.
Note also that the essence of the quote – roughly “he who flees will fight again” – contains the operative word “again,” which indicates that there was fighting before there was flight.
Indiana Homez: I hear you on the “trench coat” thing. There’s a lot of sedentary kids who’ve had the aggression centers in their brains rewired by murdering/smiting/slashing thousands of opponents in video games. A lot of these kids who’ve never been in a real-world fight are nonetheless limbicly inured to final victory in the context of violence. A couple of fistfights are probably a lot less harmful to a boy’s growing brain than ten-thousand hours of virtual slaughter.
Exactly, EBD, or as Scarron said, “Qui fuit peut
revenir aussi; Qui meurt il n’en est pas ainsi.”
Jack Dempsey was only about 180 pounds and 5’11”.
And yet he had much larger guys like Big Jess Willard down 6 times in the first round.
He had a boxing move called a “trigger step” that is rarely seen in the ring today. He said that anyone who spent 6 months working at this punch could knock out someone his own size and weight with one punch.
And one year of practice would allow a person to knock out a larger person with one punch.
It’s kind of an awkward move and takes practice. In the ring I’ve used it a couple of times with good effect.
In World War II Dempsey taught hand-to-hand combat to the Coast Guard.
Long before he was champ and even lighter in weight, he used to make money by promoting fights in barrooms around the mining towns in Colorado. He did this for quite a while.
He believed in training in unusual ways. He had a special cage built that forced him to stay in a crouch as he boxed. And he used to break training in order to work at different physical labor jobs, as he believed it integrated his movements.
I’m a little old to be competing in the boxing ring these days, but I wish I had started earlier and boxed longer.
In World War II, Navy aviation cadets were taught to box. This seemed to be counter-intuitive at first. How could someone in the cockpit of a plane find a use for boxing?
Turns out, boxing taught people to fight on when their head was reeling. It taught them to aggressivly take their planes into the combat arena. It taught them never to stop fighting.
I believe that boxing and wrestling are taught today in US military academies as a regular part of their curriculum for similar reasons.
I’ve always found it very difficult to stare down socialists, it’s so damn hard to get down that low.
My school didn’t have boxing. We had shooting. Fun! Added bonus, no early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Yeehaw 🙂
Never mind the karatay, Aaron. Teach ’em a -real- martial art.
This is just another night in my gym. We use headgear now, but that’s the only difference from 1930. Boxing is one of the only sports to run, unchanged, for 100 years, or more.
Homez- Your girls must be excited to hear female boxing is part of the Olympic Games from now on. Which club do they attend? I was in Regina last month for the Western Canadian Championships. There don’t seem to be as many girls as there were a few years ago.
As far as contact sports go, boxing is pretty safe, compared to football and hockey. It actually falls below soccer as far as statistics on head injury(concussion). What makes it so scary is the up close and personal aspect of it. Also, it’s a very lonely spot, inside those ropes. I used to get so nervous, my legs would almost give out.
I have to dissagree with the statement “they don’t make em like they used to”. I have some boys in the gym right now, that are every bit as tough as any I’ve ever seen, past or present. The human spirit is still strong in most kids, in fact, I see it getting stronger than it was when I was a kid. The 70s and 80s were a very bad period in Canadian history. I see more pride in our culture(in the west, at least), than I’ve seen for decades.
This would be considered child abuse today. The reality is that its a good idea for boys to take out their grievances against each other in a lawful physical manner. After its over you become friends, or thats how it used to be. Now they protect bullies. There is no responsibility anymore. The bureaucrat’s have diffused it to protect themselves.
A ring used to be part of any boy’s school.
We had one when the Navy League cadets where all male.
“When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.”
— H. L. Mencken
dp
Hub City Boxing Club
I was very pleased to see how many women and girls are involved in the sport. My youngest was in wrestling for a year but I pulled her because of the dismal numbers of girls in her catagory. We’d travel hours to tourneys to find out she’s got 1 or 2 matches, sometimes none. For now it’s B-ball and Softball, wrestling will have to wait until high school.
Homez- Do you know, the coach at Hub City fought Lennox Lewis, as an amateur?