(See the first part published last Friday)
FUN & GAMES: Which was your first professional fight?
ECKERT LEWIS: It is hard to say because I was meeting people like Nappy Castillo, Bill Facey and others professionally when we were still small boys. The Boxing Board was not very strict where this group was concerned, because we were fighting three rounders and the prizes were very small.
FUN & GAMES: Well, which was your first big professional fight?
ECKERT LEWIS: I think that my first big fight was with Ludwig Lightburn, who was a champion also having won a lot of tournaments in the Golden Gloves. I remember Ludwig was reported to have said that he could beat any featherweight around, and I was around, so this match had to be made.
FUN & GAMES: Who promoted the fight?
ECKERT LEWIS: Dickie Gardiner and Nacho Coye did so jointly. It was scheduled for six rounds at the Majestic Theatre as the main bout on that card. It was a very hard fight. Ludwig was a very clever boy and what frightened me was that Ludwig kept coming at me, and I used to feel that when I hit someone solidly with my left hook he would go down, but Ludwig kept coming.
FUN & GAMES: Who was in Ludwig’s corner?
ECKERT LEWIS: Kid Broaster.
FUN & GAMES: And in yours?
ECKERT LEWIS: Roy “Terror” Cadle. To get back to the fight. I floored Ludwig several times and he seemed to be bleeding profusely in the mouth, but he kept fighting. This was a frightening experience but I learned afterwards that he was using a red coloured mouthpiece, which was unusual. Anyway, Ludwig lasted the distance, six rounds, but I won very convincingly.
FUN & GAMES: I saw that fight and up to the fourth round, it seemed that Ludwig was leading.
ECKERT LEWIS: Very likely.
FUN & GAMES: Am I right that Ludwig was first seriously hurt in the fourth round?
ECKERT LEWIS: Yes. This is so
FUN & GAMES: When Ludwig got knocked down in the fourth, did he get up immediately or did he stay down?
ECKERT LEWIS: He stayed down. The mandatory eight count was in operation at that time and fighters would stay down in order to recuperate.
FUN & GAMES: After he got up, what happened?
ECKERT LEWIS: He started to put pressure on me again. He was really a good, clever fighter. There is no doubt about that.
FUN & GAMES: Anyway, that was the turning point.
ECKERT LEWIS: Oh yes. From then onward I was on top. In the following round I floored him again. His punches lost their sting and he started to concentrate on trying to go the distance, which he did, but I was the victor.
FUN & GAMES: Would you say that the deciding factor was your superior punching power?
ECKERT LEWIS: Yes. That was the difference.
FUN&GAMES: I think your next fight was for the featherweight championship.
ECKERT LEWIS: If I remember clearly, after beating Ludwig there was no other opposition to face in the featherweight division but George Meighan. George had been fighting as a professional too, and he was generally accepted as the best in the division.
FUN & GAMES: Wasn’t he the champion?
ECKERT LEWIS: There was no champion and this is why our meeting was billed as the first featherweight championship fight. Because George and I were the only unbeaten featherweights fighting as professionals, it was logical that we had to meet to decide who would be the champion. This was the view of the promoters, Dickie Gardiner and Nacho Coye, and the Belize Boxing Board agreed.
FUN & GAMES: Who were the members of the Board?
ECKERT LEWIS: I can remember Gilbert Bradley and the Nord brothers. Charles and Jerry. Incidentally, the Board had doubts that we could go twelve rounds because we were accustomed to fighting six rounders. So they sent representatives to observe us in training in the gyms. I remember there were large crowds at the gyms. It was just like Muhammad Ali was coming to town. We used to charge 65 cents admission to the gyms and fight fans willingly paid this charge. Eventually the Board sanctioned our meeting as a championship fight scheduled for twelve rounds.
FUN & GAMES: Was it a successful promotion?
ECKERT LEWIS: Yes, we had a packed house at the Majestic Theatre and the participants got a fair share of the gate.
FUN & GAMES: How did the betting go?
ECKERT LEWIS: George had become a member of the Police Force and the police contingent and a group of fans and fighters from the Southern Cresecent Gym and others were very sure that I couldn’t beat George. They had seen him beat me twice before. George had never lost a fight as an amateur or professional, and they could see no good reason why I should beat him. Of course, some people were saying that he would not be at his best due to the weakening effect of having to do night duty as a policeman. In fact, this was not the case, as he was given time off from his duties so that he could train properly. And he was ably assisted in his training by Simon Lucas, a fighter of some experience. In any case, George was a seasoned fighter who was by this time capable of training himself.
FUN & GAMES: In that fight, did you have a plan? Did your trainer and yourself work on a strategy for the fight?
ECKERT LEWIS: Well, after two experiences, I would have been a fool if I didn’t learn a lot about him. My trainer and I knew that George was a very accurate right hand puncher, but his accuracy came this way, that as soon as his left hand hit you, his right would follow almost to the same spot instantly. So he would be touching you with his left on the nose or the mouth and here would come the right hand straight to the jaw with devastating power. So we worked out a scheme of getting under his left hand because if you got him to miss with left hand, his right would miss also. The only other fighter I saw employ the same tactic was Randy Turpin in his first fight with Sugar Ray Robinson. I didn’t bend my knees as much as Turpin did but I ducked under his left hand and once I did this, he missed with both hands, and then I came up with my left hook.
FUN & GAMES: Didn’t you also catch some of his punches on the gloves?
ECKERT LEWIS: Oh yes, I caught quite a lot of them and a few got through. I couldn’t get away from all of his punches. But here I must mention the physical condition I was in for this fight. As you know, I used to play a lot of games like football and basketball, and from my very early youth used to sail these small side-board boats in races in the Gales Point Lagoon. At times I would be constantly running in the water, shallow water, from morning till night. Later on I used to sail doreys, sometimes as helmsman and other times as Kindola man. That means that you were on a rope hanging out and you had to keep your weight moving in and out from the side of the boat over and over, which put a lot of strain on the arms and especially on the legs, so that when you got hit in the ring your legs absorbed shock very well.
FUN & GAMES: You were able then to carry out this tactic of evading his punches and countering with your own throughout the fight exactly as planned. Would you then describe George Meighan, apart from his punching power and speed, as a mechanical type of fighter?
ECKERT LEWIS: He had these three good punches – a left jab, a straight right and a right uppercut, and he was very successful with them because he was so accurate. He conserved energy by not wasting any movement.
FUN & GAMES: Was he overconfident?
ECKERT LEWIS: I doubt it, because in our last fight we had fought almost to a draw. He knew what to expect. As a matter of fact, I believe I lost that fight due to lack of aggression at the end. He kept coming at me and I kept jabbing and moving. But for this championship fight, I had developed quite a lot of power. We had a good gym where there were a number of ex-Golden Gloves champs and near champs. Emilio Sanchez, Herbert Williams, Charles Garcia, Hilly Barrow and George Myvett were there, to name a few of the more prominent. They were all from heavier divisions.
FUN & GAMES: Do you think this helped you?
ECKERT LEWIS: it helped in one way. It made me learn to stay on top of them so they couldn’t go on the attack.
(To be continued in our Friday issue)