Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/82

 pounds, but which I'm satisfied weighed that many tons, especially after I'd slugged it for about twenty minutes. Then me and Kayo Kelly and Two-Punch Jackson throwed the medicine ball around till Nate blew the whistle on that. Next I yanked some weighted pulleys back and forth, then shadow boxing, where you act like you was a cuckoo and trade rights and lefts with the air, then skipping rope, and, after a rest, a few rounds of light sparring with Knockout Kelly and sometimes Two-Punch Jackson, which was fifty pounds heavier than me, but called my right hook to the jaw "the cat's cuffs!"

Nate said the worst fault I had then was the habit of leading with my right hand instead of with my left. He spent weeks trying to break me of it, hours drumming into my ears, "Lead with a straight left—then hook your right!" over and over again.

"You got a heart and you can sock!" says Nate, stopping my workout one day, "but you telegraph the other guy everything you're going to do. The worst preliminary boloney which ever rubbed a shoe in rosin would drop you for the count when you lead wit' 'at right of yours! Your left hand's about as much use to you as a pair of dancing pumps would be to a shad. Well, I'll fix 'at to-morrow!"

The next day, Nate begins tieingtying [sic] my right hand behind my back and making me spar with the left only. I took plenty punishment from some highly-tickled handlers for awhile, but at the end of a few days I had uncovered a left jab which afterwards was poison to many's the good boy.