Al Brown said "sometimes I zigged when I should have zagged".

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. When I first bred the Whosonfirst dog I truly thought he was the best in the litter. From a performance standpoint he was, finishing a son of Homer III in :22 that left everyone shaking their head in disbelief. (Lesson here is they can look good at home once or twice, but a match is a whole different deal). It turns out his 2 brothers (Whatsonsecond 2XW & Batters) and sister Tiller were much better dogs. Roto was getting old, so I thought breeding her to her "best" son would be a great deal to preserve 87.5% of her genetics. I only got 2 pups, neither met our standards. She was a great producer crossed and inbred once. When you stacked it too tightly, I believe I was pulling traits from those dogs out of the 4th and 5th generation that were suspect on gameness. Their son Littleman was the wildest, most intense dog I had ever bred, and I'd have bet anything he was good. I worked him on cattle as a pup, and he was just super agressive with a very high prey drive. He had ability also, but he too was not game.

This dog pictured above has a double long neck. In general, this can be a real advantage on offense because he will have excellent shaking power, and defensively it is difficult for an opponent to get past the head to the body. Nevertheless, I have seen dogs with phenotypical handicaps overcome them, and plenty of perfect specimen who couldn't seem to make the body work for them. Therefore, a great pit dog is great much more because of his mind and heart, than his body.