Looking For Kicks And A Few Bucks, Too

"City Squire Motor Inn, hello."

" Joe Lewis please."

" Joe Louis , the fighter?"

"You got it."

"Oh." (Aside: "Has Joe Louis checked in?") "Sorry, he's not here. We'd all know if he was."

"Wait a minute. Not that Joe Louis. This one is L-e-w-i-s. He's only 27. He's the heavyweight kickboxing champion of the United States."

"The what?"

Energy, energy," Joe Lewis growled playfully, starting his prefight lunch with a giant bowl of strawberries and ice cream, following it with a slab of broiled fish and a baked potato, finally shunting the empty potato skin aside. "Eat it, vitamins," someone said, and Lewis responded by tightening his arms and chest. On his left bicep a large vein stood out, visible even through the cloth of his shirt. Down the shirtfront, buttons appeared ready to pop. Joe Lewis grinned. "Do I look like I'm suffering from a lack of potato skins?" he asked quietly. He was young and strong and, even though he was the wrong L—is, in a sport no one ever heard of, confident.

That night young Joe Lewis would defend his kickboxing title for the first time, against a mystery named Ronnie Barkoot. It was rumored Barkoot could drive his foot through three cinder blocks, but Lewis was unworried. "I may not look particularly confident," he said, "but you can see it in my eyes." If a man's eyes are truly the window of his soul, then Barkoot was in trouble. Lewis seemed startlingly self-assured. He had come to fight in New York's moldering Sunnyside Gardens, he said, after only two professional kickboxing matches, to interest Madison Square Garden in its first kickboxing card. It never occurred to him that the Garden would not be interested.

Ronnie Barkoot, it turned out, was 29, a karate instructor from Columbia, S.C. and a former state karate champion. There was a softness at his waist, and before the right he seemed dejected, his eyes downcast; perhaps it was the sight of Lewis' torso. As the fight began Barkoot seemed to overreact to the bell, charging out with whirling karate kicks that failed to land. Lewis stayed away for half a minute, then brought down Barkoot's guard with a faked kick, thudded a right to his chest and floored him with a left hook. Barkoot wobbled up but at. 1:15 of Round 1 he bounced off the ropes into another left hook and onto his back. That was the fight. As Lewis paraded cockily around the ring minutes later, his arm raised in victory, Barkoot was still unable to stand.