Galento was resolutely out of shape. He routinely trained on buckets of beer and dozens of hotdogs. He would eat whole cloves of raw garlic and breathe heavily on his opponents, sickening them with the stench. He'd scratch and gouge and low-blow and fall on guys. Any brutal tactic to gain an edge.
In the film above, the surpassingly hard-punching Galento knocks to the canvas with his powerful left-hook in the third round perhaps the greatest fighter of all time, Joe Louis.
And there's a lesson in that.
Sometimes you take a blow from a Galento-like opponent. A foe who will do anything, fair or not, to take you out.
When that happens, and you hit the floor, when you're dazed and hurt and damaged and you don't know if you'll ever stand with dignity again, you could look to Joe Louis.
Louis gets back up.
And he doesn't change who he is.
He doesn't "lose it." He doesn't alter his game-plan. Instead, he summons up the strength and courage. You might say, if you were bold, that Louis stays calm and sticks to his knitting. He fights his fight. And recovers to pepper away at Galento.
By the fourth round Louis had beaten Galento silly, and knocked him out.
That's what you learn through the years.
Be true to who you are. Do what you do.
And even if thugs knock you down, you get up again. And you'll prevail.
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