GREG HAUGEN BECAME A FAN FAVORITE THROUGH HIS ABSOLUTELY FEARLESS APPROACH TO FIGHTING – WHICH WAS EASY BECAUSE IT WAS THE THING HE LOVED MOST By Lee Groves BEYOND TOUGH
F rom the day he was born in 1960 until the day he died at age 64, Greg Haugen fought valiantly against those who dared to underestimate him. More often than not, he was the one who emerged victorious. Just ask the bullies who teased him because of his family’s poor financial state, his Native American heritage and the fact that he was smaller than most boys his age. Once he learned to fight under the tutelage of Jim Montgomery – the family barber who ran a local boxing club – those bullies paid a painful price and, with that, Haugen won the privilege of peace and quiet. Just ask the bigger and stronger opponents who faced Haugen in Alaska bars as part of the single-elimination Toughman circuit, which gave local fighters with little or no
formal boxing training a place to slug it out. Past profiles mistakenly identified these rowdy, fast-paced matches as the genesis of Haugen’s fistic life, but, according to the biography Tough Man: The Greg Haugen Story by Anthony “Zute” George, Haugen was able to defeat all comers because he possessed a valuable asset they lacked – experience. “Everyone thought I learned how to fight in the [Toughman] fights in Alaska,” Haugen says in the book. “Most people don’t realize I had over 300 amateur fights. Most of the guys I fought were tough, rugged guys. They didn’t have any boxing experience. I would use my experience to outsmart them for the first round. By the time the second round came around, they were dead tired, huffing and puffing. So, all they could do was quit or let me beat them up. It was a game plan that
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