Toughest Athletes in Sports History

One of the most admirable traits of any athlete is toughness. This characteristic can be displayed physically (fighting through pain or injury) or mentally (fighting through adversity), and those who display it in abundance often go down in history as some of the most respected athletes in their chosen sports.

Many athletes have, in one way or another, shown incredible toughness during their careers. These men and women are legendary figures, and all of them, at one time or another, went to amazing lengths many would not even consider to accomplish great things.

They are the toughest athletes who ever lived.

It’s tough enough to be a professional athlete. Now, imagine doing that after being born missing a limb. This was the case with Jim Abbott, who was born without a right hand, yet refused to be limited on the field. In addition to developing his skills as a left-handed pitcher, he taught himself how to work around his disability on defense.

Abbott earned an athletic scholarship to the University of Michigan, where he won the Golden Spikes Award (given to America’s top college baseball player) in 1987. After his college days were over, Abbott carved out a 10-year professional career with four different teams. He finished third in voting for the American League Cy Young Award following the 1991 season (when he went 18-11 with a 2.89 ERA), and he pitched a no-hitter for the New York Yankees in 1993.

Wayne Shelford helped lead New Zealand’s legendary All Blacks rugby team from 1986 to 1990. He began a four-year stint as the team’s captain in 1987, and the squad went undefeated in that stretch, with the lone quasi-blemish being a 1988 tie against Australia.

Shelford’s spot on this list is assured, though, based largely on one game. The All Blacks faced France in a 1986 game so violent it would go down in history as, “the Battle of Nantes.” A ruck resulted in several grotesque injuries, including a ripped scrotum and a blow that knocked four of Shelford’s teeth out.

Incredibly, he returned to the game after a trainer stitched up the rupture, but he was knocked out by a concussion later on in the contest.

According to a 2002 BBC Sport article, Shelford has no memory of the game. However, those who saw him play that day never again doubted just how tough the New Zealand captain was.

Before he spent 20 years as a professional wrestler (mostly with World Wrestling Entertainment and Total Nonstop Action Wrestling), Angle was an amateur wrestling juggernaut. He was a three-time All-American collegiate wrestler for Clarion University, where he won a pair of national titles.

Angle then went out for the 1996 Olympic team, but suffered several severe neck injuries during qualifying. He fractured two vertebrae and herniated two discs, and even though he made the team, he was still in immense pain during the games. That pain, though, wasn’t enough to keep Angle from winning six matches in a row, and he ultimately wound up at the top of the podium with a gold medal around the same neck he had injured less than a year earlier.

There are a few reasons Serena Williams could make this list. She’s arguably the most dominant tennis player of all time, with 23 major singles titles, 14 major doubles titles, and four Olympic gold medals to her credit. However, the main reason she’s here is pretty simple: She won a major, at age 35, while pregnant.

She defeated her sister, Venus, in the finals of the 2017 Australian Open. The win was her eighth title in that event and her 23rd major, which broke Steffi Graf’s previous career record. Less than three months later, she revealed that she was 20 weeks pregnant, and the timing of the announcement meant that she was playing in the Australian Open about five weeks after her daughter, Alexis, was conceived.

By any measure, Serena Williams is one of the most elite athletes of the 21st century. She’s won everything there is to win in tennis (in some cases, multiple times), and when she retires, it will be with accolades that may never be repeated by anyone else in her sport. Winning a major while carrying another human being inside of her speaks volumes about not just her talent, but her physical and mental toughness as well.