It is the Original Toughman weekend. The 43rd annual Toughman/woman contest at WesBanco Arena will see new champions crowned on Saturday following two nights of fisticuffs. My thoughts turn nostalgia traveling back in time to 1980.

I was just a few days past my 23rd birthday when I was asked to be the “cut man” at the first Ohio Valley Night of Toughman Contest, helping the late Richard “Dick” Wallace Sr. I grew up in a world of smoke-filled pool halls with chalk-covered floors, learning the fight game from the men who once boxed on the cards of Art “Pop” Rooney in the basement of the Millsop Community Center in Weirton. I talk boxing from the crumbling rust belt world. I presented boxing demonstrations on how to second a boxer at age 16 in Miss K’s Junior English Class at Brooke High School in Wellsburg. It was a time of traveling to the Center Avenue YMCA for an All-Star Boxing Show and Mt. Washington St. Mary’s Hall for The Pittsburgh Diamond Belts.

In the first Toughman, I joined Dick, assisted by his brother the late Roger “Cookie” Wallace, in gloving up Dick’s son, Gold Glove champion Gary Wallace. I had been trained at Jefferson Tech in First Aid as part of the Law Enforcement Program and I was armed with Q-Tips, prepared to stop the flow of blood as I sat in the southwestern locker room at what then was the Wheeling Civic Center.

Back then, only one weight class was contested. The ring was a burgundy three-rope with a blood-stained canvas brought from Uniontown, Pennsylvania, by Tommy Shaffer who won the Wheeling Golden Gloves as a youth and operated a four-chair barber shop. Eddie “Cutie Pie” Chambers who had competed in Weirton over the years was an official seated at the ring apron.

Gary Wallace went on to win against boxers who were much larger. The Wallace family would produce several champions in the following generations.

As for me, I traveled to the 1983 regional Junior Olympics as a coach, having headed the Allegheny Mountain Association of Amateur Boxing Championship at the Millsop Center in Weirton that April. I was joined by among others Henry Smith, the grandfather of future world heavyweight champion Michael Moore of Monessen, Pennsylvania. I walked through the doors of the gym in the opening scene of Rocky and climbed the ring steps in the arena/hall depicted in the 1976 movie. I purchased my own boxing ring, renting it out to venues in places such as Akron. During the early 1980s I served as a cornerman, second and cut man, learning my trade from the owner of the Columbiana County ambulance service in Salineville.

Boxing matchmaker Ray Manning gave me my first chance to judge an amateur boxing bout on Saturday, Nov. 18, 1982.

I even secured my own byline in The Amateur Boxer, a national publication. I played some role in the fight game in more than 100 communities including bar room boxing, club shows and fairs. I cut, taped and wrapped the hands of champions in crowded, dimly lit locker rooms in Canton, East Liverpool, Ambridge, Lawrenceville, Pittsburgh, Monroeville, Philadelphia, Washington, Follansbee, Ravenswood, Weirton and a host of others.

All those dreams that were part of my years at Brooke High School came true in part because of the help of a few good men — among them Richard “Dick” Wallace Sr, Roger “Cookie “Wallace, and Ray Manning.

Keep on Punching.

Michael Traubert is a resident of Wellsburg.