Mike Conley (27 Sep 1860 to 14 March 1920) was a late 1800s professional heavyweight boxer born in Towanda, Pennsylvania (near the border with New York) and resided in Ithaca, New York. He was known as the "Ithaca Giant". He was described as a bonafide heavyweight with a "heavywieght" punch. He was reportedly the Heavyweight Champion of the Northwest. His greatest weakness as a boxer was said to be his lack of boxing finesse.

It should also be noted that he's the man who appears in this wiki's banner.

Status as "Overly Manly Man" Edit

On 24 Sep 2012, a Reddit user with the handle rken3824 submitted a post titled "Introducing Overly Manly Man" to the /r/AdviceAnimals subboard featuring a meme of Mike Conley with the caption, "Colors? / You mean those things woman and gays like?" within 72 hours, the original Reddit post received over 11,300 up votes and 300 comments.

The next day, the blog "Guyism" published a post on Overly Manly Man, calling it a "New Meme You Should Know". The same day, the men's humor site Brobible featured a compilation of posts titled "Overly Manly Man Meme", likening Conley to the character Ron Swanson from the TV sitcom "Parks and Recreation" (whose office wall is in fact adorned with a poster of Conley starting in the show's third season, predating and perhaps inspiring the above-mentioned Reddit thread). Throughout the week, examples of the meme have been shown on numerous men's lifestyle blogs and humor sites.

As a meme, Overly Manly Man can be likened to "advice animal" memes, which feature a portrait of a person or an animal (usually a dog) on a multicolored background and captioned in the margins above and beneath the portrait.