About Jefferson

One day I was in a really bad fight, and I lost my teeth. I was a really skinny kid, and I had my share of fights in the streets. One day I decided I was not going to allow any one to push me around. When I left school, there was nothing much I could do.  I had a friend, who was a firefighter, and he was also a boxer; his name was Leroy Macatee. One day I went to visit him, and to my surprise I saw that he had many trophies.

            I said, "Leroy, where did you get all of these trophies?"

            Leroy replied, “In boxing, of course, I won all of them."

            "You mean you won all these?"

            "Yes," he said, and then I asked, "Can I get some too?"

            He answered, "Sure but you’ll have to do a lot of fighting to get some."

            Sometimes Leroy would see me in fights on the streets, and when he saw the way I fought, he became interested in me. In as much as I did not have a father to look out for me, on many instances, I spent time with Leroy. Truthfully, I don’t know what route my life would have taken if I had not done so. Leroy was one of the great fighters of Mobile, and I was very much impressed with his trophies.  I wanted some too. So when Leroy took me to the Y. M. C. A. to work out and meet other fighters; I didn’t have any problem with it. There were two main reasons I wanted to fight: one was to win some trophies like Leroy, and the other was to be able to defend myself on the streets in my neighborhood. Because I wasn’t in school, I had a lot of time on my hands. My mother didn’t approve when I did not continue my schooling; but with all the responsibilities that she had, and always working so much, there was not much she could do. As for my grandfather, he could not do too much either. I stayed close to my friend Leroy, and I became more interested in fighting. Later that same year I joined the Police Athletic League and started training with their boxers and the professionals at the firefighters club. As I fought and got good at it, I received a lot of exposure and I couldn’t resist it. At the age of seventeen, I became an amateur fighter, and my career was launched. My family had no idea of what I was doing.

. I was eighteen years old when I was in the League as an amateur fighter. It was only days before the 1958 Golden Glove tournament, and I wanted to be in there very badly, to prove that I could fight, because a trainer told me that I would never become a fighter. So I had something to prove; there I was, I had already won my first fight, and hearing those words were not encouraging at all. Though it was not encouraging, but it was also a challenge to me. You see I did not believe it, and come to think about it, I had won my only fight so I could not be that bad. As far as my trainer could see, there was not enough time to sharpen my skills for the tournament. For one thing I lacked experience, so he could not put me in the Open Division. The other fighters had been around a while, and he did not want me to be embarrassed. He saw that I was too serious and dedicated to be thrown to the wolves’ right from the start. So instead, he placed me in the competition for the Novice Middleweight Championship with only one fight under my belt. I fought once, twice and three times in Novice Middleweight Division in 1958 and won all three times. I was crowned the champion of all raw Middleweights in the tournament. When my trainer, Mr. Amesbury, saw the way that I fought in these three fights, he really got interested. He knew there was a lot of refining to do, but with time and patience he believed he could produce a dynamic fighter from this recruit.

            Mr. Amesbury said, "Jeff, that was very good fighting, but we have more work to do. As I work with you day by day, I see the patience you have and I have patience and the time, so between both of us we can get a lot of molding accomplished."