The factors that make a great fighter, or even a good one, are the ability to deliver a crushing blow, the ability to stand up against punishment, and the ability to avoid punishment through ring cleverness. Cleverness can be developed through gymnasium workouts, but it requires far more than that to acquire the toughness and fighting spirit of the old timers, who, in most cases, were men who had followed a difficult manual trade before taking up pugilism as a livelihood. The trades that developed our greatest fighters were those which had to do with swinging a hammer, mining, or hauling heavy loads. Take a glance over the list of all-time greats in _The Ring Record Book_. There’s Bob Fitzsimmons, one of the few men who could bring down an opponent with a single shot. He developed his tremendous power and stamina by pounding out horse shoes on an anvil. Jack Dempsey, the Nonpareil, a top middleweight, was a cooper by trade, as was the famed Jack McAuliffe, who retired as undefeated lightweight king. Both developed their punching muscles by pounding the hoops on barrels, which in their day were made by hand. Jim Jeffries, the man whom Tex Rickard called the toughest of all the heavyweights, was a boilermaker by trade. The electric hammer had not been invented when he started working and the rivets were driven in by hand. Jack Johnson, whom I consider the best all-around man among the heavyweights, past and present, gained his strength and endurance as a stevedore lifting heavy bales of cotton on a Galveston wharf. Harry Wills, almost as sound physically today as he was in his prime, is another who developed on the docks of the South. Jack Dempsey, the Manassa Mauler, whose powerfully built shoulders and iron fists brought him into the million-dollar class of fighting men, started out in the Colorado mines. Even the great John L. Sullivan, a heavy drinker and a tough one to handle in training, did a lot of laborious work before he became a professional prize fighter. And though Jim Corbett never wielded a hammer, he spent hour upon hour, even as a bank clerk, in outdoor exercise. One cannot gain ring fame by the easy pink tea route or the playboy road. Many fighters learn this lesson at the price of a heavy shellacking, which more than likely kills their ambition altogether. But the fact that so many of the fine performers of yesterday were blacksmiths, lumbermen, stevedores, teamsters and piano movers is testimony to the fact that it’s the boys who have to battle their way to the top who make the grade.