Of the great heavyweight fighters in history Gene Tunney barely gets a mention. Fighting as a light heavyweight for much of his career, Tunney won the title late in his career only defended his belt twice, beating Jack Dempsey a second time and then capping his career with a victory over Tom Heeney. Tunney would lose only once in his career.

Known as the “Fighting Marine” for his non-combat service during The First World War, Tunney was a unique fighter, known for his defensive style and boxing skills inside the ring and for his cerebral nature and his well-rounded intellect outside of the ring. As Paul Beston noted in The Boxing Kings, Tunney’s love of serious literature and the reading of Shakespeare made him unique among heavyweight boxers but didn’t necessarily endear him to the 1920’s fight crowd.

Sportswriter Paul Gallico, best known for his famous short story The Snow Goose, who said of Tunney, “I think Tunney has hurt his own game with this cultural nonsense.”

The erudite fighter would later marry wealthy socialite Mary Lauder, raising four children in wealthy Connecticut. One son, John Lauder, would become a US Senator. Later on Tunney would form an unlikely relationship with famous poet George Bernard Shaw, some forty-years older than Tunney, with the two men visiting each other often and even vacationing together.

When Tunney passed away in the late seventies William F. Buckley eulogized him by saying the following:

We meditate with resolution to emulate his spirited encounter with life.

When the great heavyweight boxers of history are discussed Jack Dempsey comes up, but few mention the only man who beat Dempsey twice. I had heard of Tunney prior but became much more familiar with him after reading Roger Kahn’s Jack Dempsey bio. He’s a fascinating character, the intellectual pugilist known for discipline inside and outside the ring.

I find the figure of Tunney interesting for another reason, namely how his pursuit of knowledge was perceived during the era he lived in, and how it continues today in many ways. In the modern world we like to build this separation between brains and brawn with the idea that you’re either an intellectual or an athlete, but not both.

It wasn’t always like this.

Anyone who follows this space knows I have a fascination with the ancient world. One of the characteristics of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome was the idea that athletic and intellectual pursuits were intrinsically tied together and that the pursuit of both together truly represented a well-rounded person.

Plato himself was an avid wrestler and his Academy, as well as Aristotle’s Lyceum had palaestras were attendees would wrestler and fight, as well as study philosophy, combining both in the quest to be well-rounded.

Author Bill Hayes noted that Plato was particularly skilled as a wrestler. His given name was Aristocles, but the coach that he trained with as a wrestler is said to have called him “Plato”—from the Greek for platon, due to his broad shoulders.

More from Hayes:

“So good a wrestler was Plato that he reportedly competed at the Isthmian Games (comparable to the Olympics), and continued wrestling into adulthood. At his academy, the first institute of higher education in the Western world, he spoke strongly on behalf of the virtues of physical education. He felt that one should balance physical training with “cultivating the mind,” exercising “the intellect in study.” The goal “is to bring the two elements into tune with one another by adjusting the tension of each to the right pitch.”

The ancients had it right. In modern times we now can use science to better understand the impact of physical exercise on wellness and the brain. Great philosophers like Plato and Aristotle understood this intuitively and stressed the connection between the two.

In a time of record childhood obesity with schools dramatically reducing the Physical Education component of their curriculum, the idea of Plato’s Academy and the emphasis on both intellect and physical strength really resonates. Policy experts will tell us that the emphasis on higher test scores and budget strains have forced schools to limit Physical Education and recreation, but we’re missing the important connection between athleticism and academic achievement. According to the Harvard Health Letter regular physical fitness helps memory and thinking through both direct and indirect means. The benefits of exercise comes from its ability to reduce insulin resistance, reduce inflammation and stimulate chemicals in the brain that affect the health of brain cells, the growth of new blood vessels in the brain and even the abundance and survival of brain cells.

Furthermore many studies suggest that the parts of the brain that control thinking and memory (the prefrontal cortex and the medial temporal cortex) have greater volume in people who exercise versus people who don’t.

Aristotle joined Plato in stressing that exercise and fitness where a key component of an intellectual life and went as far as to tie the importance of activity to ethics and virtue. The ancients had it right, but we don’t always listen to ancient wisdom. It’s yet another example of what I call the “Original AI”, Ancient Intelligence. So many of the ideas of great thinkers like Plato and Aristotle still resonate so strongly today.

So if the schools aren’t going to do it, make sure that as parents we’re pushing our kids to be physically active. This doesn’t mean they have to play a sport, although there are great additional benefits and skills learned when you’re part of a team. It’s all about being in motion. Push the body to maximize the brain.

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