Hit Man - Brian Hughes [11]
Mickey “Sneaky Pea” Goodwin, a hard-punching and popular young white fighter, was another Kronk stalwart and would play an important part in persuading Steward that it was time to invade the professional ranks. Goodwin quickly learned the rudiments of the sport and this, allied with his fierce determination, meant he enjoyed a gilded amateur career, reportedly scoring twenty-one first-round knockouts in his first twenty-one contests. His all-action, slam-bang style made him a huge attraction on the circuit and he ended his amateur career with seventy-five victories against just ten defeats, scoring fifty-four knockouts. When he entered the trials for the 1976 Olympic team, he battled his way through to the Midwest Regionals but received a badly cut eye which ended his dream. Steward knew that Goodwin would not wait another four years for the next Games and so elected to turn him professional. Thomas Hearns, too, was ready, so on 25 November 1977, Sneaky Pea and Hearns made their professional debuts at the Olympia Stadium in downtown Detroit, for Steward’s new management vehicle, Escot Boxing Enterprises.
Professional boxing is a different beast to the amateur game, and to help make the transition, Steward recruited Don Thibodeaux, a heavily built, no-nonsense character who sported long hair and an untamed red beard and was the only white trainer at the Kronk. He joined the team when Hearns was an amateur; Steward had seen him at a boxing tournament and invited him to the Kronk. “We really have some great kids developing,” Steward enthused. “We have a great team.” He told Thibodeaux to come down and witness it for himself. “The Kronk had a great boxing team and were winning all kinds of tournaments,” Thibodeaux recalled. “When Goodwin, Hearns and Hilmer Kenty all turned professional, Emanuel wanted me to help with their training. Stuart Kirshenbaum [a podiatrist and a Michigan State Boxing Commissioner] taught me a lot about stopping cuts and so I also became the cut man for the Kronk team.”
Besides Thibodeaux, there were lesser-known trainers helping out, men such as Floyd Logan, John Brown, Taylor Smith, Luther Burgess, Walter Smith and Bill Miller. All were understated figures and not often seen on television but they were ever-present in the gym, working on the production line of young talent that continued to emerge. Thibodeaux was charged with coaching Hearns, especially when Steward was away. He was a quietly effective coach, especially skilled on boxing technique. He was instrumental in polishing Hearns’s right-hand punching. “I had him throw punches from the ball of his foot, twisting it so it would go straight,” he explained. “I would shout that Thomas should throw his punch from the ball of his foot to his knee, through to his hips, through to his shoulder and twist his fist and reach forward and land it.” Thibodeaux emphasised that Hearns should use his punches like a whip, a weapon that would prove invaluable within the paid ranks.
Steward and Thibodeaux planned to sell Hearns’s debut to network television. Olympians Ray Leonard and Howard Davis had signed TV deals on turning pro and were already making a lot of money. Armed with a scrapbook of Hearns’s amateur exploits, the Detroit pair drove to New York to approach the network moguls. It was a long day. “CBS told me not to bother,” Steward later told Sports Illustrated. “NBC let me talk to them, but they weren’t interested in getting involved in a fighter. With ABC I got into the lobby. I talked by phone with someone upstairs, and he told me to leave the scrapbook. I never did. I wanted to cry. Don and I said the hell with it and went back home.”
4 THE MOTOR CITY COBRA
AMONG BOXING AFICIONADOS, there is a school of thought that suggests that the truly big punchers are born with the inherent gift known as knockout power. Joe Louis, one of the great knockout artists, belonged within this camp but advocated regular practice. “Even a pianist has to work on his technique,” reasoned the Brown Bomber. When he