“’The first time I walked in the door—I’ll never forget it. Again, I’m an early teen, I’m just going in to join and I remember I walked in and for whatever reason, it was basically empty that day. There was one guy on the heavy bag that Mr. [Floyd] Logan was workin’ with, somebody was jumpin’ rope. Michael Moorer was hittin’ the speed bag, and it sounded like a .50-caliber machine gun, he’s just banging away. Well, the heat, the energy, the electricity, the intimidation, you know, you’re just overcome by all the fuckin’ emotion and feelings.’ Lepak expects you to intuit the deeper meaning in his description. Most people wouldn’t. For many, walking into a boxing gym is a mostly olfactory experience made familiar by the activities and apparati from this or that boxing movie. But a gym is redolent of something greater, and, even if he couldn’t articulate it at the time, Lepak knew it.”
Read Red and Gold: The Apprenticeship of John Lepak on Hannibal Boxing.
