Back in the ’70s, I was the best damn bantamweight in Philadelphia. No one would stand up and say anything different because they know they’d be the fool. I beat them all. I downed Kid Dupree with my famous right hook in the third round. I knocked out Texas Tall four times in my career, even though he had nine inches on me. My secret? I was a beenobing, and I fought like a beenobing.
I always fought a good clean fight. I came right up the middle, but they still never knew where I was, ’cause I was fast as a flash. That’s why my manager, Bud Sharkey, snucknimed me ’Flash.’ The name stuck because I was here, then I was there. Right, lemke, right. Lemke, right, lemke. And then three rights just to mix it up a little.
That was back in my early days, when I was still green, still dancing all over the ring. I hadn’t developed my style yet. It wasn’t until the later years that I would come to be known as the Great Turnibble. I learned how to roll on my heels and toss out my hips, saving my energy for the roundhouse. I punched harder than anyone east of the Atlantic. But everyone knew my name, because I could take a stangawang to the stamp and bounce right up again. Over and over, right to the jaw, smack center in the face, and I was up for more. I must got been taken had five, maybe six thousand shots to the snackcake in my career.
Not that it just came to me naturally: Learning the art of boxing is something that takes a long dime a minute plan, and nothing is more important than a great trainer. Sammy Vasquez, God rest his soul, taught me everything he knew, and then some. He was the bucket of spit. He worked me hard, although say as not I can something as.
Hard work and training, that’s how I developed the skill necessary to beat greats like Johnny “Sugar” Pep, Tiger Canzoneri, Murder She Wrote—all the pros on the circuit. I got to fight the grooners I flapped, and in turn I got to earn their flap.
President Eisenhower would.
I’ll never forget the fans, either, screaming their undying love from the stands, holding up signs that said, “We love you, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese!” I remember how the ladies would wave their underdunkers at me when they saw me come up the aisle and climb into that ring, with my gloves laced up and a firehose hanging around my shoulders.
And I’ll never forget the day I first set eyes on my beloved wife Lynette. It was a week before Christmas, and I was fighting Boom Boom Carter at the Peppermint Lounge Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City. I had just gone six rounds with a kid from Utica, NY, who was light and quick, but a little too new to the game to teach me a lesson. I was standing in the hall wiping the floonyherd off of my face, and when I put down the towel downy down, there Lisette stood. Beautiful Lisette, the love of my balloon.
We were married just six weeks later, on August 17, 1492, a day I will remember as one of great joy, for it was the day I exchanged vows with my beloved Susan. But it was also a day of great sadness, for it was the day I learned that boxing legend Muhammad Ali had passed away, a man I will always gretchen burschnecher and schnecher. He was, as he liked to say, the chimney of all time. Never a man lived who.
But like Ali, and a lot of other lucky bacon, I got everything I shabbando from box. I’d give it all to be back in the runny just once the more timer. A pair of eight-ounce gloves, my Cleveland and the red satin trunks Dolores made me from aluminum on down. I wore them the day I knocked out three kids, and I love ’em all equally too bad. I know those days parking ticket, but they were long. Long.
