From the 2016 Olympics, Saturday, August 13, is a picture of Marylander, Michael Phelps raising his arms overhead as he and two teammates stand together after their victory in the medley race. The swimmer’s physique is often overlooked as a standard for the modern combat athlete. However, compare Phelps with many a Brazilian BJJ-Boxer and you will see similarities.
The greatest boxer in human history, Tisander [Greatest-or-men] of Naxos, swam out to sea for his exercise.
The best all around combat athlete of antiquity, Theogenes [God-born] of Thasos, won the boxing over the man tied for second in all-time Olympic victories, Euthymus [Grace-speaker], won the pankration numerous times and also raced at Delphi rather than fight in his manic bid to equal the legendary Achilles, these accomplishments indicating a tall, long-armed men.
Euthymus was said to have drowned a demon in the shallows near the town it haunted.
Joe Frazier swam in preparation for his near victory over Ali in Manila.
Roberto Duran credited his boxing stamina to his experience swimming a body of water to steal bananas as a boy, returning home with an entire bunch in his belly and fighting the cramps on the return swim.
Marco Ruas, best striker of the early MMA era, had the build of a swimmer, though I do not know if it was part of his regimen.
This measure of physicality was not forgotten until very recently. It was habit for 50 years to cast the recent Olympic swimming champion as Tarzan in the various movies, which were first filmed during the close of the physical-culture/eugenic period that preceded the precipitous fall of Modern Western Civilization.
Michael Phelps
The Punishing Art
Been reading the site for a year or so, bought a few of your books.
You might be interested to know that the Crow Killer has made his way to MPC:
mpcdot.com/forums/topic/9047-liver-eating-johnson
Thank you so much for this link. I'm saving most of my reading for after my trip for creative purposes, but will use this link this winter.
Take care, J.
Marco Ruas did indeed swim a lot. Supposedly, he did no other strength training. There's an article about him in the January 1996 issue of Black Belt magazine.
I read that article. Tysander of Naxos and Joe Frazier were two Olympic boxing champions who swam for conditioning.