“If if anybody had told me, even a day before Pa was murdered, that I would find a future in professional boxing, I would have tapped his head and made little circular motions of my fingers - a little gesture we kids had to show that somebody had gone clean off his noodle. But nobody could possibly have suggested such a thing, because it would have sounded just too laughable. In the first place, I was the runt of my family. Pa was tall, but Ma was tiny, and to my shame I had taken after her. I was about four inches shorter than the average for my age and so skinny I wait scarcely 100 lbs. Kids in the neighbourhood used to taunt me by shouting, ‘Runt’ and ‘Midget’. “