Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [89]
Brooks was born in Midland, Texas, and was introduced to the fight game at the age of nine through a relative. “I had a cousin who lived a house down from me and he used to have a bag hanging from a tree. He would just hit the bag every now and then, and he would go to the park and there would be a bunch of guys who would put the gloves and box. I got to the point to where I wouldn’t do what he told me. One day I follow him and he said, ‘I’m going to stop your little ass.’” His cousin forced him to box the other neighborhood youths. “I whupped all of them. He made me box every one of them, and he was so shocked because I was so young.
“I heard about a gym that was starting up and I wanted to go see this boxing gym. I snuck away from home, walked in and I told the coach I wanted to box. There must have been a hundred kids in the gym and I pointed them out and said, ‘I can whup all these boys.’”
The coach, Sergeant Hamilton, responded the same way Plomo had to an enthusiastic young Duran. He explained that boxing could not be picked up without proper training. Hamilton had seen many youngsters arrive at the gym willing to fight, only to vanish at the first sign of violence. “He just so happened to have three sons who boxed,” said Brooks. “So I whipped his three sons, and everyone else they put in front of me. I just realized I was already a fighter. If you hit me I was going to hit you back. I was a fighter on the street.”
The meanest cats on the block don’t always make the best boxers, but Brooks learned his craft during eight years as an amateur and would go on to win forty-eight fights as a pro, thirty-three by knockout, and to hold a North American Boxing Federation title. He drew inspiration from an unlikely source. “My mom would beat up anybody,” he said. “She was a fighter who took nothing from nobody on the streets or off the streets. She raised six kids by herself. My mother always came to my fights. If there was a fight in town my mother was going to be there. That’s where I got my fighting from, my mom.”
Brooks beat so many Mexican opponents that he was labeled “the Mexican Killer.” He remembered, “The hardest puncher was Rudy Barro, a Filipino. Let me put it this way; after that fight I said to myself, ‘Damn, you take a good punch.’ Every time this guy hit me it felt like a truck running into me. Not just a truck, a Mack truck.”
After losing to Adolpho Viruet, Brooks realized he was battling more than his opponents. “I realized that I was anemic. I actually think I lost three fights from being anemic. I know I lost my world title fight for being anemic. I couldn’t get off with punches and do things that I could always do. I was shocked to be beat by a boxer like that. I didn’t know exactly, but I found out when I fought for the world title. In fact I almost died.”
Brooks traveled to the Far East to challenge for the light-welterweight championship. “In Thailand, my blood was so low that they could hardly find a pulse for me. I beat the boy nine rounds straight and they stopped the fight because they said I was too tired to finish,” Brooks recalled. “I was going to make that fifteenth round but they didn’t want me to come through with that title. I beat that boy pitiful.
“I started losing energy from about the seventh round. Everything started to become blurry to me and it was like I was drunk. I told my trainer that something wasn’t right. But he didn’t know I was anemic, and there was nothing we could do about it. He was just giving me instructions to fight. I fought like a champion. After that fight I stayed positive all through my boxing career. If a person is going to lose their positive thoughts, they should just quit before they get hurt.”
Brooks, who boxed at light-welterweight (junior welterweight), was also stepping up in weight. “I actually had to pick up seven pounds to fight Duran.