Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/81

 and getting canned whenever the boss got a chance to think too long about me. But I made up my mind to stick in the fight game till I got enough jack together to educate myself and eat while I was doing it. Even if I couldn't get no college degree, if opportunity ever knocked at my door I at least wanted to be able to carry on a conversation with it!

I learned a good deal from Shapiro and Knockout Kelly, as far as that part of it goes. None of their teachings would help me pass the entrance examinations for Harvard, but they did me a world of good in the school I was entering then. Fighters may be born, but boxers is made!

For three monotonusmonotonous [sic] months my daily routine, with Nate holding a watch on me, started off with a three to five mile trot on the road every morning, wearing three heavy wool sweaters so's I'd perspire off weight. I had a terrible time keeping inside the welter weight limit, 145 lbs. I hadn't stopped growing yet and this daily exercise was filling out my chest and muscles till Nate put me on a diet like I'm a chorus girl. After the cross-country run comes a cold shower, than I flop out on a table and a husky dinge rubber sprinkles me fluently with a mixture of oil of wintergreen and eucaliptus and commences to slowly knead me like dough, working up speed gradually till at the windup he's patting and slapping me till the noise sounds like a couple of crazy motorcycles chasing a runaway horse on a cement pavement. When he got through I'd feel like I had acted as the pavement! Then comes punching a sack filled with sand, which Nate said weighs 250