The Big Fight

by Sugar Ray Leonard

  In September 1978, I squared off against Floyd Mayweather Sr., the father of the current welterweight star, in Providence, Rhode Island.

  Providence was similar to many of the cities where I fought during the first two years of my career, and it was no coincidence. In each area where a fight was held, the national telecast was blacked out, which would have deprived us of too much revenue if it had been staged in a larger market. Another benefit was that if I could draw well in these venues, which I did regularly, in places such as Dayton, Ohio; Springfield, Massachusetts; and Portland, Maine, the networks would take extra notice of how popular a commodity I was becoming. It was no different than starting in New Haven in hopes of landing a role on Broadway.

  Mayweather, ranked ninth by The Ring magazine, the sport’s unofficial bible, presented a serious test, if not as dangerous as Hearns. The timing was perfect. It was not as if I were taking on only tomato cans, as we called the less accomplished fighters, but nor were any of them the reincarnation of Jake LaMotta. After nearly two years as a professional, I needed to find out what I knew and, more important, what I did not know. Mayweather was a slick boxer and very fast, with fifteen victories and only one defeat.

  He scored well in the opening round but I was not too worried. I wanted to see what he had, and, thankfully, it was something I could handle. From then on, I owned Mayweather, pummeling him with overhand rights to the head and attacks to the midsection. That was the difference between me and Mayweather, as well as the other welterweight contenders from my era. I could dance and punch, despite what some members of the press believed. I knocked him down twice in the eighth, and the fight was halted, mercifully, in the final minute of the tenth, and last, round. A month later, I avenged my loss to Randy Shields, who beat me as an amateur, with a unanimous decision. I was fifteen for fifteen.

  In January 1979, I took on Johnny Gant. Johnny does not rank up there with Hagler, Hearns, or Duran. Yet, like Bobby Magruder, Johnny was a star in D.C. and Maryland. Although his record was far from perfect (44–11–3), he knew how to pick his spots. Johnny was as mentally tough as they come, and given his background, it made sense. He grew up in the projects of Lincoln Heights and was sent to a youth correctional facility in Virginia when he was sixteen for driving the getaway car during an armed robbery. He served nineteeen months.

  Johnny was tutored by a pretty decent trainer: Angelo Dundee. Angelo, forced to decide between Johnny and me, chose to be in my corner for the fight. He was no idiot. Johnny was thirty, an old man in a young man’s profession, any realistic chance for a life-changing payday long behind him. I was only twenty-two, with many paydays on the horizon.

  For some reason, I wasn’t too fired up during the sparring sessions, to the point where Roger whipped me on a consistent basis. Roger had not whipped me since I was fifteen. My other sparring partners pummeled me with jabs and right hands. My efforts became so sluggish that Dave Jacobs couldn’t take it any longer.

  “Get out of the gym,” Jake ordered. “Your mind isn’t here. If you fight this way, you are going to lose.”

  Unlike the scene with Angelo during the Eklund fight, I did not get angry. Jake had been with me from the start. He had every right to go off.

  One would assume facing Johnny Gant before a large crowd at the Capital Centre would have been enough to motivate me. The only explanation is that I was suffering from the classic burnout only other boxers can relate to: too many hours in the gym, too many miles on the road, too many aches and pains in parts of my body I did not know existed. For almost a full decade, except for maybe two months after the Olympics when my future was in limbo, I drove myself with no limitations and no excuses. After going pro, I fought seventeen times in less than two years. Everything was moving fast. Too fast.

  Getting out of the gym wasn’t the solution. I needed to get out of the state. If I stuck around Palmer Park, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from sparring, and given the mood I was in, that was the last thing I should do.

  I flew to Vermont, where I had spent the final month of training for the Olympics. In Vermont, there was little to do but rest and hang out with friends I met in 1976. While I was not the type to bond with nature, the slow, tranquil environment, a far cry from the intensity of the gym, gave me the space to think. I asked myself: How badly did I want to be a world champion? Was I willing to do whatever was necessary? The same effort that had propelled me to win the gold would be required to win the crown. After about a week of R&R, I knew the answer. I couldn’t wait to get home and back to the gym. In Palmer Park, I was a new man, whipping Roger and the other sparring partners with ease. I was ready for Johnny Gant.

  On fight night, the atmosphere in the building, filled with nearly twenty thousand people, some paying as much as thirty dollars per ticket, was unlike that of any of my prior engagements. The two of us were fighting for a lot more than Washington bragging rights. I was fighting to strengthen my case for a title shot. Johnny was fighting to strengthen his case for more matches against top contenders. His window was rapidly closing. The veterans placed their bets on Johnny; the younger guys, on me.

  The fight began. At the outset, Johnny called me “boy.” Knowing he was out of his league, he was obviously trying to get me riled up. He did just that, but that was not a good idea—for Johnny. I respected him, but nobody called me “boy.” I’d make him pay.

  I battered him with an early combination and didn’t let up for the rest of the evening. He landed a few strong rights to my head during the fifth round—he wouldn’t be Johnny Gant if he didn’t put up a fight—but I fended them off without any trouble. In the eighth, I connected with a left, a right, and an uppercut. Before long, Johnny was on the canvas.

  He got up and took the mandatory eight-count, but he was in a daze. I went right at him again. I was not one to hold back when my opponent was in trouble, no matter what chance there was of inflicting permanent damage. Fights can turn in a matter of seconds, and the next thing you know you’re the one who is getting beaten up, and believe me, the guy doing it will not show you any mercy. After a few more lefts and rights, the referee stopped the fight, and it was lucky for Johnny, who would have been seriously hurt, a fate I wished on none of my foes. Almost none. Duran will come later.

  After the Gant fight, in which I made about $200,000, I knocked out Fernand Marcotte and Daniel Gonzalez, and recorded a unanimous decision over Adolfo Viruet. In May 1979 came the battle in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, against Mexico’s Marcos Geraldo—and another round in the battle between Mike Trainer and Angelo Dundee. I made sure again to stay out of it. There was enough for me to deal with inside the ropes.

  Mike was upset that Angelo had thrown me in there against Geraldo, a middleweight. I knew I was in for a rough night when I saw him at the weigh-in. All he had on was his underwear and yet he made me look like Luis Vega. He had me by nearly ten pounds.

  The first punch Geraldo landed did not make me any more secure. His power wasn’t real, I told myself, each punch capable of knocking my head off. One stinging right I’ll never forget shook me up so much that I started to see three Geraldos in front of me and I didn’t know which one to hit. I began to dance, which was usually how I cleared my head. Not this time. I still saw three men. Fortunately, I aimed for the right one, the one in the middle, and landed enough solid blows to capture the decision. The victory came with a cost. While I have no proof, I believe the problems with my detached retina, diagnosed three years later, originated with the damage from Geraldo. My left eye was horribly swollen, and it was the first time I experienced double vision. Thank goodness I was in superb shape or I might have lost to Geraldo, and there’s no telling how that would have impacted the rest of my career.

  At the same time, I learned a lot about myself that night. I learned how to summon, from somewhere deep within, the extra will I didn’t know I possessed. Knowing it was there, and could be tapped again, gave me the boost of confidence I would rely on for years to come. Most boxers do
n’t go that deep, and it’s not because the will can’t be summoned. It can. The hesitation comes from the pain one must tolerate to do it. You become exhausted and convinced you’ve given your last possible breath. As Ali memorably put it, in referring to the latter rounds of the “Thrilla in Manila,” you feel you’re on the verge of death. That, however, is precisely when you must give more of yourself, no matter how much it hurts. That is what separates the good fighters from those who make history.

  On the other hand, some suggest it is also when a fighter may give too much, his desire to prevail greater than his instinct to survive, and thus open himself up to the most severe consequences, his reflexes too weak to match his resilience. Yet, while a wounded fighter may be the worst judge of his faculties, he should never surrender. That’s why there are three men in the ring instead of two. Allow the experienced referee to stop the proceedings if he senses one combatant is threatening to cause irreparable harm to the other. A fighter can never possess too much heart.

  I went to my room, praying for the pain to go away. I lay down for a few minutes, but it did no good, so I proceeded to the hotel bar to get my mind off the fight.

  When I got there, I heard the voices of Mike, Janks, and Angelo at a nearby booth. The conversation was anything but friendly.

  Mike could not accept anyone, even Angelo Dundee, not bringing his A game, as I’d be the one to pay the price. The price on this night was a face filled with welts and bruises.

  “How dare you not do your due diligence,” Mike said. “This guy was a total monster.”

  “People told me that he couldn’t take a punch,” said Angelo, who had never seen Geraldo fight in person. “Look at all the times he’s been knocked out. He’s got a glass chin.”

  “It is your responsibility to check everyone out,” Mike countered, “not take the word of other people.”

  The problems between Mike Trainer and Angelo Dundee, however, were not about to be resolved at a hotel bar in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They were never to be resolved. Each went back to his neutral corner and that’s how it remained until Angelo finally left the team in the late eighties.

  With my consent, Mike rewrote Angelo’s contract to pay him 15 percent of each purse, with a cap of $75,000 for a nontitle fight and $150,000 if a crown was at stake. The days of seven-figure paydays were coming soon and the last thing he wanted to see was Angelo make a fortune when he did not, in Mike’s opinion, fulfill his duties. The new arrangement would wind up costing Angelo millions. In the Hearns fight, for instance, he would have received $1.8 million of my $12 million take instead of $150,000. On the day before the bout, Angelo refused to leave his hotel room after it had been reported on television that Hearns’s trainer and manager, Emanuel Steward, was taking home a much larger percentage of his fighter’s earnings.

  Angelo complained in his book several years ago he wished I had stood up for him in the contract dispute with Mike. With all due respect, he is totally off base. I stood up for him plenty, which made Mike tread much more carefully, as he knew I admired Angelo and would never accept his dismissal. Working for me from my debut in 1977 through the Hagler fight ten years later afforded Angelo the chance to stay in the spotlight long after his first meal ticket, Ali, retired, and make a ton of money. The truth is he has no one to blame but himself. He failed to do what he was hired to do. In this corrupt business, I had to pick one person to trust, and that was Mike Trainer. He never let me down.

  In the spring of 1979, before I made easy work of Tony Chiaverini and Pete Ranzany—neither fighter made it into the fifth round—Mike and Angelo moved ahead with the plans for my long-awaited title shot. The man standing in the way of me and the belt was WBC welterweight champion Wilfred Benitez. After the two sides reached an agreement on the most delicate part of the negotiations—the money, naturally—a deal was inked for the fight to take place on November 30. What a deal it was: a whopping $1.2 million for Benitez and $1 million for yours truly, both record paydays for nonheavyweights.

  The Benitez camp argued that, as the champion, he deserved more money than I did, though Mike rightly pointed out that neither of us would be anywhere near the seven-figure territory if it weren’t for my ability to attract nonboxing fans, and interest from the networks. We gave in, but the contest, at least, was slated for Caesars Palace, where I loved to fight.

  Before Benitez, there would be one last tune-up, against Andy “The Hawk” Price in late September, also slated for Caesars.

  Price’s record (28–5–3) wasn’t especially noteworthy, but two of those victories came in nontitle bouts, against the highly regarded Carlos Palomino and future World Boxing Association welterweight champion Pipino Cuevas. A strong case could’ve been made that I was assuming an unnecessary risk by fighting a top-notch opponent on the eve of my first giant payday. What if Price, ranked eighth by The Ring, landed a lucky punch and pulled off an upset? Stranger things had happened. Gone would be the date with Benitez and the $1 million, and there’d be no guarantee I would receive a payday like that again. I didn’t see it that way, which meant I was either naïve or arrogant, probably both. I was also greedy. I’d earn $300,000, not too shabby for an evening’s work.

  In preparing for Price, I studied films of his fights, depending on the strategist I trusted more than anyone: myself. That takes nothing away from the outstanding suggestions made over the years by Angelo, Jake, Janks, and Pepe. Yet it was only when I saw the grainy black-andwhite footage on the screen that I could begin to anticipate how a fight might play out, round by round. I was trying to solve a riddle. If I figured it out, the other man was in trouble. If I didn’t, I was. When I reflect on what I miss most about my boxing career, it isn’t the noise in the arena or the articles in the papers or the camaraderie in camp. I miss the hours and hours of searching for the ways to exploit my opponent’s weaknesses.

  Aside from his tendencies in the ring, I knew little about Andy Price. Until Diana Ross clued me in.

  I went to see Diana in concert several nights before the fight. We had been introduced a few years earlier by a mutual friend.

  “Sugar, how ya doing?” Diana asked when I visited her backstage after the show. “What are you doing here?”

  “I have a fight in a couple of nights,” I said.

  “That is so funny,” she said. “Marvin Gaye told me he’s managing some fighter here. I think his name is Andy Price.”

  “Diana,” I said, “that’s the guy I’m fighting!”

  We both cracked up.

  “Good luck, sweetheart,” she said.

  Price was the one who needed the luck and he didn’t get it. I caught him with a vicious uppercut to the jaw in the opening round and his hands dropped to his sides. A fighter’s hands usually come down in the later rounds when fatigue sets in. For his hands to fall in the first minute or two was not a positive sign for any Price fans.

  I followed with a barrage of punches. Soon Price was on the deck. He tried to get up at the count of seven, but couldn’t make it, and required assistance to reach his corner.

  In the three years since I turned pro, twenty-five men had taken me on and twenty-five men had gone down to defeat.

  One more and I would be the new welterweight champion of the world.

  4

  All the Marbles

  In the same three years, I was neither a boyfriend to Juanita nor a father to Ray Jr. I made what I would describe as cameo appearances, showing up in their lives for brief stretches before disappearing again for days or weeks at a time. Either I hung out in the gym in pursuit of my next victory or I hung out with friends, my “boys,” as I called them, in pursuit of my next piece of ass. No matter what financial responsibilities I assumed for Juanita and little Ray, I saw myself as a free man in every sense of the word and was bound to prove it . . . over and over and over. After the three of us started to live together in the summer of 1977, I rented a separate apartment that I kept secret from Juanita. Although she had heard rumors, she didn’
t know for sure until she tricked a friend of mine into coming clean, and I still tried to deny it. Even after I told her the truth, I didn’t stop using the apartment.

  The story was the same on the road, my boys taking care of the arrangements. In Baton Rouge, for example, while I trained for Marcos Geraldo, they kept a sharp lookout for any pretty women who came to the sparring sessions, or to the fight itself, jotting down their numbers and addresses. Weeks later, about ten of us, including my brothers, flew back into town to divvy up the pool of talent, and, believe me, there was plenty to go around after I got first dibs.

  Looking back, I can offer no defense for my conduct. I was wrong and I have to live with these sins, and the ones to follow, every single day. They eventually cost me my first marriage and deeply harmed the relationships with my two older sons. At the same time, I wasn’t the first, and I wouldn’t be the last, celebrity to surrender to the irresistible temptations fame provides. Until one has experienced the full range of pleasures that most people are denied their whole lives, and that includes sex with breathtakingly beautiful women, one has no concept of how alluring they can be. If I had not been rich and famous, these women would not have given me the time of day.

  The boys, now old men, tell me they miss the glory days. At the age of fifty-four, blessed with a second chance at marriage and fatherhood I didn’t deserve, I do not. Still, I understand how they feel. We thought we owned the world. No possession was beyond our grasp, and there was no reason to wait for it. If I went to a car dealership and spotted a Maserati that I desired, the car would belong to me within minutes. I wouldn’t sit in an office for an hour to work out the financing. “Call Mike Trainer,” I’d tell the lot owner, “and make the deal.” He’d hand over the tags and I’d drive away with my new toy. Cars, women, they were all toys.