Don't Mess With This Maytag Repairman
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It's 6 p.m. on a Wednesday evening, and I'm punching the next chief executive of Maytag Corp. in the stomach as hard as I can. "Huh!" he shouts, exhaling forcefully each time my fist is halted by his abdomen. "Huh!"
Decked out in a white robe and his recently earned black belt, Lloyd D. Ward is giving me my first karate lesson, in the basement of his suburban Des Moines house. The shouts, he explains, allow him to absorb the blows. Without any air in his lungs, he is incapable of having the wind knocked out of him.