[JimStinson]

No offense to Joe Louis but I think that in 1957 Mathews might have been able to take him one on one.
Mathews and Pete Whisenant were lifetime friends, all the way back to their days in the minors. Pete and I were friends for about the last 10 years of his life when he was living in Costa Rica. Both were drinking men. Pete asked me to call Mathews and try and convince him to accompany me on one of my visits. Mrs Mathews hated Pete. So I spoke with Eddie on the phone and he agreed. A couple days later he called back and said he couldn;t go and was instead going on a "cruise" , am sure his wife put the brakes on the trip as according to Pete "she ran the show" , Ironically it was during that cruise that Mathews had a freak accident when he slipped and fell in the water and was pinned between the ship and the pier , breaking his pelvis. he never fully recovered and by most accounts it was the accident that contributed to his death.
I knew Pete when he was in his 60's and he was intimidating and still loved to fight. We were sitting in a dive bar one day in Costa Rica and two big guys were in the booth behind us. Words were exchanged and Pete smiled at me casually and told me "I hope you can take at least one of them because a fight is about to break out" , Pete then stood up and walked over to the bar and shook hands with a guy that was well over 6 feet tall and maybe 250 pounds. He was slapping him on the back and buying him a beers, both of them were laughing like crazy leaving me sitting with the two hoods that were giving me the stare down. Pete came back and sat down and I told him it was a good time for him to run into an old friend like the big guy at the bar. Pete smiled and said "never saw him in my life, but I always make friends with the biggest guy in the bar just in case a fight breaks out"