It was the night Jeff Harding came back to the corner at the end of the eleventh, behind on all three judges' cards and bleeding around both eyes, his nose long broken. As Lewis cleaned the cuts he quickly poured everything that was important into his ear. Then he picked him up from his stool with one last instruction: 'Go out and come back champion of the world ...'
Over the past thirty years Johnny Lewis has trained six world champions, among them some of the greatest names in the sport; Jeff Fenech, Kostya Tszyu and, yes, Jeff Harding.
Yet he is known for much more than that. For a wisdom that stems from his childhood growing up in Erskineville, where he mixed with hustlers and hard men and, in his words, never met a bad bloke.
Now, in his authorised biography, we learn why Johnny Lewis is not only Australia's greatest ever fight trainer, but why he is a winner, and why those around him are winners.
Why his lessons of the gym hold true outside the ring.
