Wild Thing

Lew Yates began boxing at the age of six and as an adult he was ruthless in pursuit of his dream of becoming world heavyweight champion. But when his license was revoked following an assault on a referee, he turned to the murky world of unlicensed boxing. Documenting how Yates rose to the top of his bloody profession amid extremely turbulent circumstances in his personal life—which resulted in him raising his three children alone while struggling to make ends meet—this biography traces days of training in order to become king of the unlicensed ring and nights dealing with the gangsters and drug dealers in the nightclubs where he worked. His remarkable story includes surviving being shot at and stabbed, while two of his associates were executed, shot through the head at close range. Their murders remain unsolved but Yates now imparts controversial information about the assassins and reveals why both men were killed.