Boy Called A Sissy... Knocks Out Gym Teacher

When Joey Barrow was a teenager, his schoolmates labeled him the class sissy.

At eighteen, while other boys were engaging in more "masculine" activities, Joey was taking violin lessons. All of his brothers and sisters were doing "important" things like looking forward to college, getting married, and going into business.

Joey's mother insisted he take violin lessons, hoping he, Joey, would also"make something of himself."

But youngsters can be cruel. To his schoolmates Joey was a fiddle-playing sissy. "Joey is a sissy! Joey is a sissy." Then one day Joey was called a sissy one time too many. This time Joey smashed the boy who had taunted him, smack on the head...with his violin.

It didn't help, not really. When the story reached the ears of Joey's classmates, it bought him another round of laughter. But one of the other boys in school did not laugh. His name was Thurston McKinney.

Big, strapping Thurston decided it was time Joey got involved in something with a little more muscle. that is the unheralded news.

Thurston exercised regularly at a local gymnasium and invited Joey to accompany him.

As always, Joey had his violin with him. "If you want to work out with me," said Thurston, "you'll have to rent a locker." Locker rental was fifty cents. The only fifty cents Joey had was the money his mother had given him for that week's violin lesson.

So Joey borrowed some gym trunks and some old tennis shoes from Thurston, rented the locker with his violin money - and he put the violin inside.

It may still be there.

The first time Thurston invited Joey to spar with him in the gymnasium boxing ring, Joey clobbered him. Flattened him. Knocked him out. The dazed response of Thurston McKinney, himself already a Detroit Golden Gloves Champion, was "Boy, throw that violin away!"

So Joey got to liking the gymnasium. With the money his mother had intended to finance weekly violin lessons, Joey kept a permanent locker.

In five years, Joey Barrow would be twenty-three - and heavyweight champion of the world.

There is not much in the anthologies of athletics about Thurston McKenney, but it was he who once upon a time took Joey under his wing.

Joey dropped his last name, Barrow, so his mother would not know it was her son they were talking about in the newspapers.

The world knew for years before she did, that sissy Joey Barrow had become the unbeatable "Brown Bomber," Joe Louis.

Now you know ... the News Unheralded!

SOURCE: Files and archives of the late Paul Harvey

Awesome isn't it? Little sissy Joey Barrow came to be known to the world as the dynamic "Brown Bomber"...Joe Louis.

Unfortunately we can't train you and turn you into someone as awesome as that, however, we can do the next best thing.

Check out Beverly Hills Celebrity Trainer Leon Lavigne. You can use his secret methods to get yourself in shape, build the body of a pro, and make over $10,000 a month!

Find out what all the excitement is about right here