Hit Man - Brian Hughes [8]
The boxers that Steward most admired were the great stylists, the men who moved with poise and rhythm, who made the Noble Art a thing of beauty and grace. Men like Willie Pep, the little defensive genius, and the peerless Ray Robinson. He learned from watching them, and in turn began to pass that knowledge on. His own boxing career still continued on its upward trajectory and when he returned again to Chicago, he scored four consecutive victories before upsetting the heavy favourite to win the 1963 National Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions in the bantamweight division. He was the only Detroit boxer to win an individual championship and, due to the overall team performance, he was a member of the squad which won Detroit the team title, the first in twenty years.
Nineteen sixty-four was a seminal year in the life of Emanuel Steward. He married Marie and changed jobs to work for the Detroit Edison Company, first as a construction labourer and later as a journeyman electrician and then a special projects director. He was still keen to box as a pro but failed to find “a good, honest professional manager who I can trust to look after my interests. I looked everywhere around the professional scene for the kind of manager who I could blend with and trust,” he said. “I wasn’t satisfied so I decided to stay as an amateur.” The reality, however, was that his family and new employment took precedence over the sport, and he took a sabbatical from boxing from 1966 until 1969. Instead he committed his energies to his job at Edison and to night classes in electrical engineering at the Henry Ford Community College. He was determined to rise up the ladder from labouring to more technical jobs.
During the summer of 1969, his fifteen-year-old half brother, James, arrived from West Virginia to live in Detroit with Emanuel’s young family, which included two new daughters, Sylvia and Sylvette, in their little brick bungalow in a quiet subdivision on the city’s west side. Soon after his arrival, James asked his older brother if he would teach him to box. This request seemed to reignite the passion for the sport he had enjoyed with Elbert, and after five months of dedicated training at the nearby John F. Kronk Recreation Center, Emanuel proudly watched James win the 1970 subnovice Detroit Golden Gloves. His ideas about training young fighters, which had lain dormant for three years, re-emerged, and he began to think seriously about his potential as a trainer. Should he commit?
A year later, he accepted the position as a part-time coach at the Kronk. He took training sessions starting at five o’clock every evening and was paid $35 a week. The new commitment towards developing young boxers had a profound impact on Steward. He brimmed with enthusiasm and knowledge and ideas about how to approach the sport. This paid an immediate – and spectacular – dividend. He entered James and six other young novices – Wilson Bell, James Stokes, Robert Johnson, Desmond Hickman, Jerry Cook and Louis Holland – into the 1971 Golden Gloves tournament. Amazingly the team scored twenty-one consecutive victories and won the team title. Soon after this success, however, most of the team were obliged to join the armed services to fight in Vietnam. When Wilson Bell, who had joined the Marines, came home on leave, he called to see his coach and presented him with the Marines’ red and gold dressing gown. Although the Kronk colours at this time were traditionally blue and gold, Steward introduced a further change by deciding that the boxing team would adopt the red, gold and blue colours from now on.
Emanuel’s career within the corporate world of Detroit Edison