Referencing mob guys about their " one on one " toughness is so ridiculous it shouldnt even be discussed. If there was a UFC champion back in 1984 and nick scarfo approached him and said: " you're dead, sleep with one eye open", i highly doubt the tough guy UFC fighter would be thinking choke hold. He would be more concerned about the pants he just urinated in.
Wise guys care about making money and thats it. If someone gets in the way of making their money, they dont stop and ask if he is a good fighter. They kill him, make their money, and call it a day. A lot of you younger guys are a bit too wet behind the ears to understand that.
When someone says such and such a person is feared its because of the following.
1) he can literally snap his fingers and have a bunch of guys do whatever he tells them to do.
2) what ever he does, he can care less about the consequences such as jail. That makes no sense to a normal person. These guys arent normal, they are brainwashed.
I wasn't singling out mob guys for there one-on-one toughness just for the heck of it; I was, in fact, making the reference related to Gotti and his fight in prison. The case of Gotti was interesting, because you had a well-known mafia boss of a large New York family that got beaten up by some small-time hood. I then made the case that many guys like Gotti get by on their tough reputations, but many times their reputations are built on the backs of their henchman; and if you isolate many of those tough guys and take away their power base, they often times become targets.
But I agree with you that muscle and brawn is not the end-all, be-all of anything. And I would much rather piss of a UFC fighter or boxing champion than I would a mafia boss.
