Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [65]
Instead, a lightweight from Portland, Oregon, entered the picture. Ray Lampkin had dreamed of being a fighter since his childhood, but at first lacked the discipline needed to excel in the fight game. He made the Olympic national qualifiers as an amateur but not the finals. “I smoked cigarettes for ten years,” Lampkin admitted. “Even though I was winning fights in the amateurs, I wasn’t a good fighter. I was in no shape because I was still smoking. All the fights that I had lost, I ran out of gas in the last round.”
Lampkin looked to turn pro but had no trainer or manager. While promoter Sam Singleton tried to find him a spot on a local card, the boxer worked three jobs out of necessity. His plea to “just find me someone to fight” was repeated often, until one day in 1972 it was answered. “They found me someone to fight named Gordon ‘Newsboy’ Johnson,” said Lampkin. “I didn’t even know who he was, so I just got out there and started to train. I knew some guy who told me, ‘You’re going to get some newspapers thrown at you.’ And I said, ‘He might be throwing some newspapers, but I’ll be throwing punches.’”
After winning the decision in his pro debut, Lampkin woke up to what was possible. “If I did this well without being in the proper shape, imagine what I could do if I stopped doing the things that were holding me back. I didn’t want to wonder how good I could really be.” He didn’t lose in his first twenty pro fights, the only blemish being a single draw. Lampkin became something of a local attraction in Oregon, but his progress was slow. “I decided if I was going to make a move in the boxing game, then I had to get a manager,” he said. “Some guys who have trainers and managers don’t even go ten-zero, I thought.”
He eventually hooked up with Mike “Motormouth” Morton, a Runyonesque mainstay of the Pacific Northwest boxing scene, and early in 1973 traveled to Puerto Rico to fight Esteban DeJesus for the North American Boxing Federation lightweight title, with only Morton by his side. “I went over there without my trainer Jack Brackey, who was the best teacher of the game that I ever had,” said Lampkin. “He taught me how to be a pro, and my manager wouldn’t send him over there with me. Since the promoter only provided two plane tickets, he was left out. Fighting DeJesus without my trainer was one of the biggest mistakes of my career.”
Not only a trainer and teacher: Brackey was also Lampkin’s shadow. When the sun went down and Lampkin didn’t want to finish his routine, it was Brackey who prodded him. When the young fighter needed a pick-me-up in the latter rounds of a fight, it was Brackey who put his hands around his waist and urged him back out there. When the left hook was thrown too wide, Brackey was there to shorten it up. When Lampkin got knocked down, Brackey went with him. Now Lampkin, who had never traveled to another country, was alone.
“When I got to San Juan, there were a lot of things I didn’t like. People were telling me, ‘Don’t drink the water.’ I was so scared to drink the water and by the time the fight came around I was so weak. My manager should have gotten me bottled water or something.”
Fighting in the new Roberto Clemente Coliseum in Rato Hey was also a problem. “It was a brand new ring and it was real slippery,” said Lampkin. “Every time I tried to swing or throw a punch, I was slipping. In the first round, DeJesus hit me with a right hand and I went down. He dropped me for the first time in my life. I got up and went twelve rounds with him. I slipped two or three times during the fight. If we had prepared ourselves for this, and checked the ring, we would have known beforehand that there was a rod in the middle and that we needed rubber