In spite of the cold garage, Kid Dynamite quickly broke into a full sweat. After the assault of advertisements, Dick Clark popped on the air with “Big Girls Don’t Cry” by the Four Seasons and then Paul Revere and the Raiders. Kid Dynamite expected a full day of “suck” radio and he was getting it. Still, any music was better than nothing. The kid was working hard now, gliding around the floor with his hands carried high at the sides of his head and his chin tucked down. The plank floor creaked as he moved in and out on the bolo bag. It rebounded with such speed and velocity and from so many unexpected directions that he had to concentrate intently to avoid having it slap him in the face. He did flunk geometry and that was ironic. Boxing acumen involved calculating angles. The angles of the ring, Kid Dynamite understood perfectly. He would show Louis Reine angles aplenty.

Kid Dynamite had boxed him beautifully for two rounds the year before. He had fast hands and could hit Reine at will. Listening to Lolo was the mistake on that one. Reine was discouraged and out of gas after the second round. Lolo told Kid Dynamite to stay on the outside and box his opponent, “Take this one on points.” So he followed the advice and boxed at long range. Then as Reine recovered his wind, Kid Dynamite got trapped on the ropes, where Reine went to work on his body. As soon as Kid Dynamite dropped his elbow to cover his liver, he got clocked along the jaw and after that it was essentially over.

This year Kid Dynamite was in shape, but he didn’t actually have any better plan for Reine than before. He wasn’t going to slug with him, he was going to give him angles and box. He was the superior boxer, and he was stronger than he had been the year before, if he saw a clear shot he would tee off, but he definitely wasn’t going to go in trading. Although Kid Dynamite had earned a small notice on the Beacon’s sports page, as his Uncle Mikey had said, Louis Reine was touted in the Chicago Sun-Times as the premier fighter of the tournament. At eighteen, he had won forty-two fights and lost none. He had been fighting stiffer competition from the South Side and the paper said he was likely to go all the way to the Nationals.