“Character is that quality upon which you can depend under pressure and other conditions. Character makes the fighter predictable. Character helps him win.” These are the famous words of Cus D’Amato, arguably one of the greatest boxing trainers of all time. Cus trained three world heavyweight champions, including Mike Tyson. He had a unique approach to training, which incorporated his personal philosophy. He spoke universally about human struggle and the practice and attitude that goes into conquering the inner and outer self. He saw beyond the physical challenges of a fighter’s training and sought to define and enhance who they were at their core.
Character makes a fighter. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term “Character” as “the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual.” In Integrity and Virtue: The Forming of Good Character, character is further explored as being permanent and inseparable from the identity of the person whom it defines. To have good character means to have the right disposition, desire, and moral tendencies. Gaining mastery over these aspects emotionally, ethically, and through consistent work achieves stability in self-governance and self-possession.
To obtain self-governance and self-possession is to define yourself by your values, emotions, and habit of good action. It lays the foundation on the road to your personal success by tying your values closely to your identity. In The Collective Works of Edith Stein, vol. 9, Stein says, “The human soul must have self-knowledge and be capable of taking a stand with respect to its own self. It must find itself in a dual sense: it must learn to know itself and it must come to be what it is destined to be.” Stein speaks of self-discovery, where you must be in dialogue with your inner core to gain a sense of purpose and destination. The same process can be seen when Cus trains a fighter. In an interview, he said, “I have to first determine [the fighter’s] emotional state, get his background, to find out what I have to do, how many layers I have to keep peeling off so that I get to the core of the person so that he can recognise, as well as I, what is there.” Cus understood that in order to find personal success, an individual had to first recognise and learn about themself. He acted as a mediator between the discovery of self and the destination to offer guidance. In this sense, the sport of boxing had much more to do with the boxer’s mental state rather than the physical challenges.
When examining some of the greatest boxers throughout history, it becomes evident that the most successful boxers understood their own strengths and potential. An example of this can be demonstrated by examining the styles they developed. The 70s were particularly a great era for boxing with big names such as Mohammad Ali, George Foreman, and Joe Frazier. Each of these fighters built their style based on their physical capabilities, such as height, reach, and muscular proportions, factoring in their speed, power, and technique.
Ali came up with the expression “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” He weighed 214 pounds and towered at 6’3”, and he had incredible reach and speed. He dominated the ring with his distance control. His defence relied on upper body movement, and he was quick to change angles when an opponent got close. He fought primarily as an out-boxer, which meant he was quick to stay out of the opponent’s range and work from the outside. This demanded stamina, distance control, and timing to look for the right opening.
Foreman was a brawler. His hits were slow, and his body telegraphed his moves prior to the hit. While Ali considered his punches easier to dodge, the few that landed carried devastating power. His career had an 84 percent knockout rate, and most of them were in the early rounds. Watching Foreman train with a punching bag will show you that his punches caved the bag, leaving a mark as big as his fists. He won his last heavyweight championship in 1994 at the age of 45, an age that would have set him far past his prime.
Frazier was a swarmer. He put pressure on his opponents by closing in the range. Using his short stature as an advantage, he would duck and roll through his opponent’s punches and time his offensive strikes. He was able to speedily raise and lower his upper body at will and did so with incredible stamina over as many as 15 rounds.
Each of these three fighters demonstrated a unique style of boxing that suited their frame. Foreman was slow but used monstrous power. Ali was fast and dominated the rhythm inside the ring, and Frazier was short but versatile with his power and defence. Not to mention the immense amount of practice it took them to compete on a world stage, these fighters understood their strengths and limitations and built their character into styles that suited them best.
Everyone is a fighter. Perhaps not literally, but we all have challenges in our lives that lead us to question our worth and beliefs. A failed job interview, a low grade you just received from a university course, or a bad breakup. These are all challenges that we fight through, and by discovering who we are, and how we can develop to fulfil our goals, we strengthen our minds to ease the hardships in our lives.
“I am the greatest.” Muhammad Ali preached that he would be the greatest in the world, long before his first heavyweight title fight against Sonny Liston. There are those who reasonably doubted him, believing he spoke out of turn. Yet, despite the opposition, he persevered through the challenges in his life with certainty and an immovable belief in himself.
