Which could have been anywhere between an 81% to 810% drawdown in a typical leveraged strategy. Very few levered positions would have survived it without stopping out or completely blowing up, but an unlevered position absolutely could have -- and most (long term buy and hold) did

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Most hedge funds did significantly better than the S&P in 2008. They were down, but nowhere to the same degree.