Who's the toughest person in professional sports?

Yeah but he cheated...everyone knows it...they just won't report it... [/Mizzou]

 

Speaking of that, has anyone mentioned Jack Youngblood?

 

Pete Sampras in the '96 (?) US Open ranks as one of the most impressive things I've seen.

Add the tourney he won while grieving his manager's illness/death and you've got one legit contender for the title.

 

Now someone has. Good call.

 

I nearly got in a fistfight when I said that at a party. Some dude asked me for my opinion, and I gave it to him. Then he told me I was wrong. And when I began arguing with him over semantics, he wanted to throw down. Of course, me telling him the clock he was wearing around his neck read 4:23 probably didn't help matters too much, either.

 

I got your back, Mikey.

 

Honestly, I think all boxers, MMA and UFC guys need to be exempt from this discussion. Just because they're in a whole other class when it comes to tough. It's part of the job description.

Of the ones in the major team sports, Bob Gibson, Nolan Ryan and Kyle Farnsworth all deserve a mention. Any pitchers that make you go, "Ummm...yeah, good pitch. Let's do it again sometime," when they've just drilled you and you have a bat in your hand rate high on the scale.
There's any number of old school NFL guys that would not only play with a broken arm, but club you with the cast for the sheer hell of it. Bednarik, Butkus, Deacon Jones and Night Train Lane (although he may have been more of a cheap-shot guy with the clotheslines) all qualify. Same with hockey goons.
Charles Oakley looks like Cro-Magnon Man crossed with a mean, rabid dog. There's just that vacant fierceness behind the eyes, like he's not so much thinking about hurting you as he is pondering the most painful way to do it. He scares me. Always has, always will.

 

Nolan Ryan

(signed) Robin Ventura

 

What about Sam Huff, who beat the crap out of a West Point alum even though ol' Huff was on the north side of 70?

 

ha! I was just going to mention Ventura...mangled his ankle in a home plate collission in spring 1997, was back by mid-summer and was a wrecked shoulder and wrecked knee away from winning the 1999 NL MVP. Then he hit the Grand Slam Single despite said wrecked shoulder and knee.

And now he's undergone an ankle replacement. Dude was nails, and not just because he wore Dykstra's number.

 

Nice call on Youngblood... Favre may have played with a broken thumb, but Ronnie Lott cut off his finger so he wouldn't miss a game...