Hit Man - Brian Hughes [9]
His first task was to search for fresh faces in the wake of the break-up of his successful Golden Gloves squad. He soon unearthed a prodigy down at the Kronk. “I stopped by the area between the swimming pool and the locker room and I saw [Bernard] Mays sitting there waiting to go swimming like the other kids,” recalled Steward. “I remembered him because he was a friend of Louis Holland … and I asked him if he wanted to learn to box. I wanted to teach somebody to box and I started picking him up every day.”
Even as a schoolboy, Bernard Mays was something special. Indeed a number of Detroit boxing fans still maintain that Mays remains Steward’s greatest work. “We spent hours and hours in the gym and I taught him every little trick I knew. I developed a tremendous fighting machine. When he had his first amateur fight, everybody was shocked at how good he was.” Mays was so exceptional that he enjoyed the rare status of headlining amateur tournaments at just twelve years old. By the time he was fourteen, Mays had won National AAU Junior Olympic championships and was being tipped for the very top. His blend of speed and power earned him the nickname “Superbad.” Because of the publicity Mays generated, Steward found that he was inundated by hundreds of young men applying to attend the Kronk boxing sessions. “He was a twelve-year-old that was knocking out sixteen-year-olds. Every kid in the city and their parents were coming to Kronk because of this one kid I taught.”
Steward always considered Mays to be the most talented boxer he ever coached. “He was a combination of Joe Louis and Ray Robinson; he could box and punch and didn’t waste motion,” said the trainer. “He could slip a punch by half an inch on either side and then nail you.”As an amateur he won two National Junior Olympic championships and reportedly lost only once in over two hundred amateur contests. “Whenever he fought,” Steward later recalled, “the first two or three rows would be packed with managers and trainers from all over America. Some would bring their boxers to watch Superbad perform.”
Robert Tyus, one of the original Kronk members and winner of two national titles, confirmed Steward’s assessment of his gym mate. “It gave me chills just to talk about him. Mays was like Sugar Ray Robinson reborn. He had it all.” Another early Kronk member, John Johnson, recalled his prowess: “Superbad Mays was the most awesome fighter I ever saw. He could devour you with his speed and power, which were something special. Bernard had a wicked left hook that would take the breath from your body.” Mays also left an indelible impression on Hearns, who later told Detroit News’s Fred Girard that he almost quit boxing rather than face the prospect of sparring with his stellar gym mate every day. “Bernard Mays was the king,” said Hearns. “I dreaded going into the gym every day because I knew I’d have to get in the ring with Bernard and it was going to be a brawl.”
However, by the time he was all of sixteen, Steward’s multi-talented star was no longer showing up for training. He smoked dope and had secretly become addicted to malt liquor. Yet for a time he continued to shine in the ring, destroying every opponent. Having been too young to try out for the 1976 Olympic team, he decided not to wait for the 1980 Moscow Games but to turn pro. In 1978, he left the familiar environment