The Big Fight

by Sugar Ray Leonard

  “Ray, you got to give time to the press,” Angelo used to tell me. “Even if I’m really tired, I talk to them. They’ll have the last say.”

  Angelo also knew, perhaps better than any trainer in history, the adjustments to make in the corner on fight night during the crucial moments when the wrong decision can cost your man the belt. Such as the night in 1963 when he secured for Ali extra time in his tough battle with England’s Henry Cooper by enlarging a split that had already opened up in his fighter’s gloves. A loss to Cooper would’ve certainly put a halt to Ali’s bid for the crown. One year later, during his first championship fight against Sonny Liston, when a solution presumed to have been applied to the champion’s face somehow got into Ali’s eyes during the fourth round and blurred his vision, Dundee refused his demand to cut off the gloves and end the fight. He pushed Ali toward the center of the ring and told him to hang on until his sight was back to normal. Before round seven, when Liston didn’t get off his stool, Muhammad Ali was crowned as the new heavyweight champion of the world.

  Angelo Dundee comprised the final member of a team I was convinced would someday make me a world champion as well.

  So much had transpired in the short three months since Montreal.

  So much was yet to come.

  3

  From Vega to Vegas

  Angelo Dundee came aboard in November, agreeing to a deal for 15 percent of my earnings. A few weeks later, I left D.C. to train at his base, the historic 5th Street Gym in Miami Beach. I was in awe. I could not believe I would be working out in the same ring where Ali hung out all those years. I had heard of the place for so long I almost expected gold locker rooms and new, shiny equipment. Instead, the gym was the same as any other, except for one difference. I could smell its greatness.

  Angelo observed as I went through a standard workout, hitting the bags, jumping rope, and doing a little sparring. He offered a few pointers afterward but was generally pleased with my technique.

  “We’re not going to change nothing in his style,” Angelo had told the reporters in D.C. “We’re just going to add a few touches. The Sugar Ray Leonard who was good enough for the Olympics is good enough for the pros.”

  Angelo estimated it would take about three years before I’d earn a shot at the title. With each of his fighters, he selected opponents to challenge them, but not too severely or too quickly. If that meant a delay in vying for the crown, so be it. Ali didn’t take on Liston until his twentieth fight, more than three years after he turned pro. A loss to any combatant at an early stage in his career could derail a young promising boxer for years to come, and perhaps cause irrevocable damage to his fragile psyche.

  The man chosen for my pro debut was Luis “the Bull” Vega from Ponce, Puerto Rico. At five feet seven and 141 pounds, Vega, to be blunt, appeared to be no bull. A loser in eleven of his prior twenty-five matches, he would not pose a serious threat, which was just what we aimed for on opening night. The scheduled six-round duel was slated for February 5, 1977, at the Baltimore Civic Center, which put together a more attractive offer than Abe Pollin and the Capital Centre group.

  I was thrilled to launch my new life in Baltimore. Roughly forty miles from Palmer Park, Baltimore was close enough for my fans and family to attend, including Pops, who, sitting in a wheelchair near ringside, was given a one-day pass from Leland Memorial Hospital in Riverdale. He was so excited he almost passed out.

  At first, the doctors told him he was too sick to travel. Being Cicero Leonard, he did not back down. His long-term prognosis was excellent, thank God, and due to the money I would be making, he and Momma would not have to worry any longer about their bills. On the subject of money, the credit went to Mike Trainer. It was obvious from my first fight that the risk I assumed by hooking up with someone outside the close-knit boxing fraternity would pay large dividends. I stood to earn, depending on the size of the gate, as much as forty thousand dollars, an unprecedented sum for a pro debut. And I thought I was rich when I signed the autographs at the car show in Los Angeles.

  Vega, on the other hand, was guaranteed only $650, becoming the first of many fighters in my career to earn a lot less than I did but as would be the case with nearly everyone I faced, he did not come close to matching me as a box office draw. My fights attracted national television coverage and fans who didn’t normally follow boxing. For the first time in decades, since perhaps the original Sugar Ray, nonheavy-weights made headlines. And journeymen professionals such as Luis Vega were granted a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pull off the upset and become famous, and perhaps rich in their own right. With Ali nearing the end of his magnificent run, someone needed to seize the throne.

  The fight, to be carried by CBS, generated a terrific amount of hype, the marquee at the Civic Center reading: PRO DEBUT, SUGAR RAY LEONARD, SATURDAY FEB. 5, 4 P.M. Billboards and banners were plastered on practically every block downtown. Taking a page from the Ali playbook, I predicted a knockout in the fourth round, and figured Vega might go sooner. If that wasn’t arrogant enough, I sent a letter to President Jimmy Carter inviting him to the event. Surprisingly, Carter, in office for only two weeks, found a better way to spend his Saturday afternoon.

  On the day before the fight, I took Juanita and my son to see Rocky. The film was inspirational and instructive: I must not take Luis Vega, or anyone, for granted, I told myself.

  Fight night finally arrived. Before stepping into the ring, however, I took a shot I didn’t see coming. From Janks Morton, of all people.

  Janks approached me in the dressing room. I expected words of encouragement, perhaps a last-minute suggestion on how I should approach this memorable night. Instead, there was only one person he was thinking about, and that was Janks Morton.

  “Ray,” Janks said, “make sure that Mike gives me my percentage.”

  His percentage? I was livid. Janks may very well have had a legitimate gripe, but this was hardly the time or the place to bring up any financial concerns.

  The matter was dealt with eventually, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that for the first time, I realized how money could affect those closest to me, and it would not be the last time. I loved Janks Morton, and I’ll always be grateful for his generosity during those uncertain weeks after the Olympics. He handed me cash, almost every day, it seemed, that he could have easily used for his family. But that didn’t excuse his selfishness. I saw a side of him I never saw before, and it would change our relationship forever.

  After kissing my father, I climbed between the ropes to a warm ovation and the theme song from the Olympics. I took off my purple robe with stars on the sleeves—this was showbiz, after all—and said a brief prayer.

  One journey was over. Another was about to begin.

  Vega was not a strong puncher, but he was fearless, withstanding the barrage of roundhouse lefts and rights I fired round after round. Despite his woeful record, he had never been knocked down. I could see why. He did deserve to be called the Bull.

  His face growing red and puffy, a cut opening under his left eye, Vega kept moving forward. So this was what it was like in the pros? With their livelihoods on the line, not just their reputations, other fighters would come after me with everything they had. I danced and did the Ali shuffle to entertain the fans, cruising to the decision by winning every round on each of the three judges’ cards. Yet it was not nearly as routine as it might have seemed. It rarely was.

  More than ten thousand spectators showed up at the Civic Center, guaranteeing that I would make the forty thousand dollars, enough to soon pay back the investors. Mike Trainer had thought that I might have to secure a part-time job to fulfill my obligations to them, and that it could take years. It took months. We did not spend any of the money and no one ever had to lend me another dime.

  I was a free man, and, after years of servitude, so was Cicero Leonard. Shortly after the Vega fight, I went to see my parents to tell them the news.

  “Daddy, you will never have to work again
,” I said.

  They were speechless.

  I said I was going to buy a new home for them in the suburbs. Months later, when they moved into a four-bedroom home in Landover, Daddy and Momma could not stop saying, “God.”

  With my first fight in the books, Mike Trainer set out to finalize a longer deal with one of the networks. Prior to the Vega contest, he went back and forth from one section of the Holiday Inn restaurant in Baltimore to the other, meeting with CBS and ABC representatives. In the end, we signed a six-fight package with ABC for about $400,000 in rights fees. Once Mike learned the fight game, and it didn’t take him long, he never wavered in his belief in my earning potential. He made deals directly with auditorium owners, increasing our share of the profits. Needless to say, the boxing insiders were not thrilled with Mike Trainer.

  While Mike lined up the money, Angelo lined up the next opponent—Willie “Fireball” Rodriguez—for another six-rounder, to be held again at the Civic Center.

  Willie was no Vega, winning ten of his eleven bouts, the lone setback coming against Rufus Miller, whom he defeated in the rematch. Willie possessed a solid left jab, a long reach, swift hands, and good footwork. In other words, he presented what Angelo was looking for, a test. Little did I know how much of a test.

  In the fourth round, Willie landed a few solid blows, chipping one of my teeth. If the battle with Vega was a lesson in resiliency, the battle with Willie showed me the difference in punching power between the amateurs and the pros. Nobody, not even the Cuban, Andres Aldama, nailed me as hard as Willie did. What had I gotten myself into? I wondered. I had a gold medal in my possession, Angelo Dundee in my corner, and more cash than I could possibly spend, but I was a long way from taking on the premier fighters in my division. As it turned out, it was a blessing that Willie hurt me. I got mad, and when I got mad, I fought with a sense of urgency I didn’t always exhibit. I held Willie at bay, registering a unanimous decision, and nearly knocked him down during the last two rounds. The fight was a turning point. At 141 pounds, I came in too light. For my next bout, I weighed 142 and was up to 145 within six months.

  The hard work was only beginning. Over the next twelve months I fought nine times and starting with my fourth fight, against Frank Santore in the fall of 1977, they went from a scheduled six rounds to eight, and in the spring of 1978, to ten.

  To build the extra stamina I would require if the fights went the distance, I sparred for longer periods, and more frequently. With every match I felt more confident, my delivery crisper, my defenses more alert, my footwork more elusive. I didn’t punch from my toes, as I did against Vega and Rodriguez. I learned how to plant my feet properly to maximize the impact of every blow. Most fighters look directly at the target when they throw a punch. I never looked at the other man’s face or his midsection. I began to see his entire body in a single frame. My fists knew where to go. I spent hours watching film of the top fighters from the past, taking mental notes of their tendencies, filing away strategies for use at a later date.

  Still, the critics—and every fighter has had them—found fault with the lack of quality in my competition and the lack of power in my repertoire, and posed the question all boxers must eventually address: Could I take a punch?

  The critics were dead wrong. I was doing what young fighters had done in every weight class, gradually moving up in the level of difficulty. I was knocking my opponents out, four falling in the first three rounds. What more did they want me from me? As for taking a punch, not once did I come close to hitting the deck. The real problem was that a significant segment of the written press resented the fact that I’d been discovered and promoted by television instead of in their daily columns. The balance of power in sports journalism was shifting, and they were slow to adapt.

  I didn’t let the criticism get to me. I saved my energy for training and disposing of whatever challenges Angelo put in front of me. I never questioned the matches he made. If he knew how to guide Ali on a steady course toward a title shot against Liston, he surely had a plan for me. I fought once a month, which was plenty. After each fight, I would take about a week off before training for the next.

  That does not mean Angelo and I didn’t have our moments. The one I recall most vividly took place during my thirteenth pro fight, against Dick Eklund at Hynes Auditorium in Boston. Eklund was a white guy from the city of Lowell, about an hour away. The fans were unruly for most of the night, a number of them shouting, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” I should have known the abuse was coming. Several days earlier, when I arrived at the Boston airport, I was greeted by a priest who said, “How are you, boy?” “Boy”! From a servant of God!

  I tried to block the insults from my mind, but the anger kept simmering inside me to the point of affecting my performance. I could not put my normal flurries together. When I sat on the stool during one break, Angelo let me have it.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he barked. “That’s no way to fight. What have I taught you the whole time we’ve been together?”

  I didn’t have a problem with most of what Angelo said. He was right. I had a problem with the way he said it. He yelled at me, and yelling always made me angry, no doubt from the times I heard my parents raise their voices and the panic it caused. Some fighters need their trainers to berate them on occasion. I wasn’t one of them. Angelo treated me as an infant, not a contender for the welterweight title.

  I didn’t respond. Nor did I speak to Angelo for the duration of the bout, which I won by decision. If I could have found a way, I wouldn’t have gone back to the corner at all. After the verdict was announced, I bolted from the ring. I did not linger with my seconds to celebrate the victory. I didn’t give a damn about the fight itself. I tracked down Mike Trainer in the dressing room.

  “Angelo screamed at me,” I said. “I won’t accept that kind of attitude ever again. Only my father can talk to me like that.”

  Mike told Angelo how I felt. Mike always looked out for my feelings, as well as my finances, and, as usual, the issue was resolved. Angelo and I never spoke about it, and for the rest of our years together he never talked down to me again. If anything, we grew closer as the stakes grew higher. We would be forever linked, the white Italian from Philadelphia and the black kid from Palmer Park.

  Yet there were misconceptions about the role Angelo played in my development as a fighter that I must clear up.

  Angelo was my official trainer, but he didn’t train me the way people thought. I’d been trained already by Pepe Correa, Dave Jacobs, and Janks Morton. I used to laugh at the stories in the paper that gave the credit to Angelo for swooping in a week or two before every fight with the magical formula to get me ready. I mean no disrespect to him, but if I did not have a strategy by that point, I wasn’t going to find one in a few days. His true value was in the corner during the battle, and as a matchmaker. In those roles, there was no one else who could have served me any better.

  Never was Angelo’s skill as a matchmaker more critical than during the summer of 1978. After the Eklund fight, there was the possibility that I would next go against a promising young fighter from Emanuel Steward’s Kronk Gym in Detroit, where I had occasionally trained as an amateur. His name was Tommy Hearns. The money would be hard to resist, around $100,000. I didn’t know Tommy very well, though the two of us sparred for a few days before my sixth fight, in December 1977 against Hector Diaz in D.C., and got along just fine. I looked forward to the challenge.

  Everything was moving forward—until Dan Doyle, a promoter we worked with in New England, got a call around midnight from an anxious Angelo Dundee. Angelo had just returned, according to Dan, from a fishing trip in the Florida Keys.

  “We can’t fight Hearns,” Angelo told Doyle. “We’re not ready for him.”

  Tommy was not a star yet—through that July, he had fought only ten times and just once outside the state of Michigan—but Angelo recognized his talent and feared the possibility of an upset. He also envisioned the day, perhaps a
year or two away, when I would fight Tommy for a lot more than $100,000. In October, when Hearns demolished Pedro Rojas in the first round, Angelo appeared wiser than ever.

  What would have happened if Tommy and I had fought in 1978 instead of our duel for the ages three years later? I can’t be certain, though regardless of the outcome, the fight would have altered the rest of my career, and probably not for the better. A loss might have postponed my first title shot for a year, if not longer. A win might have kept Tommy from developing into the force he became, thus depriving me of my most glorious triumph.

  In the opinion of Mike Trainer, however, Angelo Dundee was not doing his job, and it irritated him to no end.

  After I turned pro, Mike assumed that with Angelo on board as my manager, he would return to his law practice in Silver Spring. It wasn’t until much later, long after it became clear that Angelo had no intention of taking on the traditional duties of a boxer’s manager, such as scheduling and contracting bouts, that Mike began to bill me at an hourly rate. Mike wrote a series of strongly worded letters urging Angelo to abide by his responsibilities but got nowhere. I would have done the same thing if I were in Mike’s position, dealing with someone who expected everyone else to do the tasks he was assigned.

  Most disturbing to Mike was the brief time Angelo put in at the gym. He believed Angelo needed to accept a bigger role or a smaller cut. He could not have it both ways.

  Angelo wouldn’t give in. My career, meanwhile, couldn’t be put on hold while there was friction between the two most influential members of my team. Any delay in my progress toward a title shot could prove costly. Mike kept me posted, although to preserve my neutrality in the dispute, and my friendship with Angelo, I stayed out of the firing line. They would settle their differences later. Or so I assumed.