The ring announcer stepped through the ropes, took the microphone. In this corner from Louisiana, wearing the black trunks and weighing in at two hundred and twenty-nine pounds, with a record of thirty-eight wins and four losses, the man with the killer punch… The boos drowned out Kane’s name. Jake stood again with his head down, waiting it out, wondering if he heard right. Two hundred and twenty-nine pounds? He was fighting seven pounds over the light-heavyweight limit and he was still spotting the man almost fifty pounds.

And in this corner, from the great state of Arkansas, with a record of fifty-five wins and two losses, weighing in at one hundred and eighty-two pounds of pure speed, grace, and boxing skill. Rebel Jake McCloskey!

The roar of the crowd was like a flight of airplanes taking off. He spun, bounced, raised his gloved fists high over his head. The cheers were like a drug. He threw another flashy combination.

One of Kane’s seconds peeled off his robe. The man was enormous. Shoulders like a bull buffalo. Bucky growled something in Jake’s ear, one of boxing’s old saws: “Don’t forget what they say: Hit a nigger in the stomach and a fat man in the head.”

He had to shout to be heard above the crowd: “So what am I supposed to do with a fat nigger, Bucky?” Bucky’s answer was drowned by the roar of the crowd. The bell rang. Lionel Kane rose from his stool, dark and menacing. Jake took two steps into the ring, Kane was on him. He caught a hard right on the bicep and spun away, his arm buzzing. Kane moved like a big, fat cat, heavy in the middle but quick on his feet. Jake tried to circle away from that hammer-on-anvil right, took a left hook that made his ear buzz. For the rest of the round, he was able to duck and dodge. In the second, he caught Kane flush with a four-punch combination to the head. Jake had put men on the canvas with less than that, but Kane didn’t blink. He just kept boring in, down low like a submarine. Jake was taking shots to the body that made his organs move. He could hear the punches explode on his hide. Kane was bathed in sweat, which made him slippery and hard to handle in the clinches. As Kane stepped out of a clinch in the third round, he threw a left hook to the ribs. Jake felt something crack in there, like a roof timber giving way in an old barn. By the fifth round, the gamblers were hollering blue murder. There was too much money riding on this fight, most of it on Jake McCloskey.