Sweetwater's Bombed Bomber

"Ambers did not go down," a ringside wit observed, "but he did a lot of funny things standing up."

What he did mostly was turn tail and stumble toward the ropes, with Jenkins following right behind. There Lew flailed away at Ambers' back until Referee Arthur Donovan stepped between them.

Notwithstanding all this, Ambers came out strong in the third round, shooting a steady stream of lefts into Jenkins' face. Jenkins backed away from the continuing attack through the fourth and fifth rounds.

The sixth was all Ambers until just before the bell, when Jenkins unsheathed one of the hardest punches of the fight, a slashing right to the jaw. Only because Ambers was backed into his corner did he avoid tumbling to the canvas. Between rounds Jenkins told his trainer he would finish off Ambers in the seventh. "It took all this time to sweat the whiskey out of me," he said later.

In the seventh round Jenkins stepped inside and pushed Ambers to the floor with a left. Ambers rose and offered a handshake after the accidental shove, but Jenkins hit him with a right. A lightning left hook tore into Ambers' jaw and left him on his feet but practically helpless. Sensing victory, the Swatter pummeled Ambers with both hands, pounding him to the floor with a right and a left to the head. Ambers' grunt was clearly audible as he slowly crumpled earthward. He struggled upward at the count of eight, but Referee Donovan moved in to stop the annihilation, and Jenkins was declared winner by a knockout in 2:26. Immediately after the fight Ambers' manager announced that his fighter was retiring.

Sitting sweat-soaked in his dressing room after the fight, the winner and now relatively sober champion—a man seldom troubled by modesty—remarked casually: "How come I didn't knock him out as quick as I did last time?"

For the next six weeks Jenkins trained as usual in the bars and taverns of the town. He met Montgomery for the third time in something less than prime condition, lost by a decision and wandered back to the bars.

Lew was finished as a champ, but his life was far from over. He joined the Coast Guard late in 1942, piloted a landing craft and was decorated by the British for his D-day heroism. After the war he reenlisted in the Army, tried the ring once more and, after a couple of years of mediocrity, became a hillbilly singer. Today Lew Jenkins is the greenkeeper at the Antioch golf course in California, where he dodges balls instead of jabs. He never touches hard liquor.