The Bite Fight by George Willis

Author:George Willis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Triumph Books
Published: 2013-04-11T16:00:00+00:00

9. Man in the Middle

Mills Lane had just finished a three-mile run across the back roads outside of Reno, Nevada, an exercise he undertook at least four times a week. It was something he dreaded when the alarm rang at 5:00 am, but it was part of his regiment, and Mills Lane was all about regiment.

After his run he would put on boxing gloves and begin punching on a light or heavy bag, rehearsing the jabs, hooks, and footwork that he learned decades earlier. At age 60, Mills Bee Lane still prided himself on staying close to the 146 pounds he fought at during his youth.

Most remember Lane as a referee. But he began as a boxer. He picked up the sport in the Marine Corps where he won the All-Far East welterweight title before moving on to the University of Nevada-Reno where he won an NCAA championship in 1960. A disciplined fighter always kept himself close to his fighting weight, and Mills Lane was all about discipline.

Boxing was always in Lane’s blood. Unlike many of his contemporaries who used the sport to escape impoverished conditions, Lane simply loved the sport even though he grew up in a world of privilege in the Deep South.

He was the grandson of his namesake, Mills Bee Lane, who founded Citizens & Southern Bank in 1906 in Savannah, Georgia. It grew into the largest bank in the state. His father, Remer, however, shunned the banking business for farming, purchasing an 11,000-acre plantation in rural South Carolina.

The young Mills Lane wanted to make neither banking nor farming his life’s work. He wanted to be a Marine. After begging for his father’s approval, he enlisted on August 13, 1956, beginning a three-year career that would instill in him the values of discipline, integrity, punctuality, and loyalty that he would apply to all future aspects of his life.

It was in the Marines where Lane became the boxer he had dreamed of being when he first sat in front of a radio and listened to the second heavyweight championship fight between Joe Louis and Billy Conn. Louis’ eighth-round knockout on June 19, 1946, at Yankee Stadium hooked him on the sport.

When the battalion boxing team asked for volunteers, he was among the first to sign up. Up to that point, he had done some informal sparring, but nothing really competitive. He would soon find boxing was more strenuous than he ever imagined.

Extra road work, hundreds of sit-ups, countless hours on the heavy and light bags, and endless sparring sessions were needed before he was ready for a real fight. When that time came, he made all the work worthwhile, using an in-your-face attack to capture the All-Far East welterweight title while stationed at Camp Sukiran on the island of Okinawa in the East China Sea.

After being discharged from the Marines in August 1959, Mills decided to enroll at the University of Nevada-Reno. He had read a Sports Illustrated article about the school’s boxing program and figured it was a good place to go school on the GI Bill, get a degree, and pursue the sport he loved.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.