The Big Fight

by Sugar Ray Leonard

  With five rounds in the books, a third of the fight, I needed to make something happen. In round six, I did.

  The left hook was the one. Coming with about a minute remaining in the round, it snapped Tommy’s head back. He was hurt.

  I went for the kill, firing lefts and rights to the head and rib cage as fast as possible. I wanted the fight to be over. My eye was not getting any better, and sooner or later he might land that devastating right of his.

  Unfortunately, I got too excited. If I had slowed down and shortened my punches, I might have put him away. No one had hit the Hitman like this before.

  I could not wait for round seven. I was sure Tommy had not yet recovered. I was right. He wasn’t the same fighter from the first five rounds. Working inside repeatedly, I threw more left hooks to his defenseless jaw. My arms were weary, yet I told myself to keep punching no matter how exhausted I got. Tommy was ready to fall. Maybe so, but I couldn’t finish him off. He staggered back to his corner, but had survived.

  In the eighth, Tommy regained his footing, and by the ninth he was all over the ring, keeping me off balance with his flickering jab and remarkable reach. In a reversal of roles, I was stalking him as he conducted a boxing clinic, reverting back to his days as an amateur. When I saw this pattern develop, I should have resorted more to my own jab. I had a pretty good one. But I didn’t. Instead, spoiled by my success in rounds six and seven, I kept waiting for the decisive blow to put him down. I kept waiting . . . and waiting.

  His strategy paid off. Though he wasn’t inflicting much punishment, he was winning rounds and the rounds were winding down. My eye was getting worse, and by the eleventh or twelfth, my vision was down to 50 percent of normal, perhaps less. Given my inability to clearly see every punch he threw, I was risking a heck of a lot more than a belt. But I’d never quit before in the ring and I wasn’t about to start now. I saw what quitting did to Duran’s reputation. The fight was slipping away and I had no answers. My mind told me: You need to throw more punches! My body didn’t listen. People admire our bulging muscles and lean waistlines and automatically assume that we have superhuman powers. We don’t. We break down like everyone else. Our bodies can’t always do whatever our minds command.

  As the twelfth round got under way, the doubts about Tommy’s stamina seemed laughable. He couldn’t have looked any fresher. All he had to do was keep boxing for another twelve minutes, and the WBA and WBC crowns would be his. While I got in the best licks, primarily in rounds six and seven, it didn’t matter.

  Then it came, the spark I needed, from the voice of Angelo Dundee. Angelo did not make the contribution we assumed he would after coming aboard in 1976, leading to the bitter run-ins with Mike Trainer and the restructuring of his contract a few years later. But, at roughly 8:30 P.M. on Wednesday, September 16, 1981, Angelo came to my rescue, just as he had saved Ali against Cooper and Liston in the early 1960s, and for that I will always be grateful.

  “You’re blowing it now, son,” he said. “You’re blowing it.”

  The way Angelo said it was as important as what he said, with the perfect mixture of urgency, encouragement, and affection. Angelo was no Knute Rockne, but, with the exception of the Dick Eklund fight, he knew precisely how to get through to me at the most pivotal moments, and no moment in the fight, or in my career, was more pivotal than this.

  As I relaxed on the stool, my eye nearly closed, I realized how right he was. I was blowing it. A punch or two away from putting Tommy out in the sixth or seventh rounds, I was on the verge of losing my crown, of being what some of the writers said I still was, a made-for-TV fighter who was no match for the real thing, Tommy Hearns. I decided to attack Tommy with everything I had no matter how close I might get to his right hand. If I was going down, I was going down as a warrior.

  Midway through the thirteenth round, I got my chance, unleashing a right that hit him squarely in the head. His head snapped back as it had in the sixth, Tommy staggering along the ropes. He was hurt worse than before. I proceeded to throw about twenty-five punches in a row, hitting Tommy everywhere, and hard. I couldn’t have stopped even if I had wanted to, the exhilaration as each shot met its target the most wonderful feeling in the world. I fed off the roar of the fans, and the sight of my opponent in trouble, ready to be destroyed. And to think there were people who had questioned if I could be ferocious enough when it was necessary. How wrong they were. I loved to hit other men. I loved to see them crumble.

  Tommy fell into the ropes and was practically on the canvas, though referee Davey Pearl did not rule it a knockdown, and then told Tommy to “get up” instead of asking him if he could get up. Pearl’s response was a prime example of how the men wearing trunks are not the only ones in the ring who can let the pressure of a championship fight cloud their judgment.

  No matter. Once Tommy was back on his feet, I pummeled him with another barrage. He fell again, his battered body draped over the lower strand of the ropes.

  This time, the countdown began. After getting up, Tommy was ready to go again, but was saved by the bell. He might have bought himself a chance to regroup over those last thirty seconds if he had known how to clinch. That’s what I would have done.

  I nearly ran from my corner for the start of round fourteen. Tommy escaped in rounds six and seven from a certain knockout, in part due to my negligence. He wasn’t going to escape this time.

  A right to the head. A hook to the body. Four more rights to the head. The great Tommy Hearns was a punching bag.

  Again, I couldn’t stop. Thankfully, with a minute and fifteen seconds to go in the round, Davey Pearl stopped it for me.

  I wasn’t much better off than Tommy was. When Janks and my brothers lifted me in the air, I slumped into their arms and almost collapsed onto the canvas. I had nothing left. Everything went into those last two rounds. Everything and more.

  Tommy and I hugged. We had never been enemies in the first place, despite the insensitive things I said about him.

  About an hour later, in meeting with the reporters, we came across as the best of friends, and why wouldn’t we be? We gave the world quite a show, and made millions doing it. No matter who prevailed, we were both set for life, and, still in our twenties, there was every reason to think he and I would soon see each other again in the ring to make more history, and money. The public would demand a rematch, and we would be happy to give it to them.

  For me, the satisfaction was not just beating Tommy and winning the crown. It was the way I beat him. The experts said I could win only by decision. Knocking him out, with my eye nearly shut and after my opponent, by all accounts, had been in control of the fight, proved I was truly one of the greats. Hearns was a giant, and I slayed him.

  Thirty years later, the fight remains my defining moment as a fighter. I was at the peak of my abilities, and so was Tommy. I’ve run into him many times over the years, usually at a fight in Vegas, and the affection between us remains genuine. Which is why it deeply saddens me to see him go through rough financial times and it is painful when I have to tell him that we’re not living in the 1980s anymore.

  “Let’s do something together,” Tommy suggested last year. “We can both go around the country doing exhibitions. The people love us.”

  “The people love us, Tommy,” I said, “but they don’t want to see two old guys in the ring with gloves and headgear on. I don’t want to get hit by you and I don’t think you want to get hit by me. Let’s leave the past where it belongs.”

  And what a past it was.

  8

  Seeing a New Future

  I thought I knew what fame was before the fight with Tommy. It was nothing compared to how I was treated after the fight. I traveled to the White House to visit President Reagan and to Hollywood to mingle with celebrities. I appeared on the talk shows and was named the Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year. I was Sugar Ray Leonard 24/7, and loved every minute of it. Ray was never around. I didn’t need him. He would have just gotten in the w
ay.

  Another reward was the attention I received from members of the opposite sex.

  It had been like that since my early years as a pro, when, once a month, I used to walk into Odell’s, a black nightclub in downtown Baltimore, and the girls would scream as if I were a rock star. I’d take the hottest ones I could find to the local Holiday Inn, sharing them with the rest of the boys. Then came the unforgettable trip to Baton Rouge after the Geraldo fight. Once I beat Tommy, however, the amount of women we met, and the caliber of those women, rose to a whole new level. They were faster, looser, better dressed. I got an inkling of how Hugh Hefner must have felt.

  Much of the credit, I suppose, goes to James Anderson, who had come aboard as my bodyguard. From his years with Ali, he knew everybody, including the sort of women who hung around boxers, and not because they came to watch us beat each other up. These women were groupies, and every sport has them—women who gravitate to the company of rich, famous, and well-built men, if you know what I mean, for adventures in bed that they would never get from their boyfriends back home. James kept a book—and yes, it was black—filled with the names and numbers of the most attractive women, black and white, in cities from coast to coast. A few days prior to our arrival in a certain destination, usually L.A. or Vegas, he would call them. James was a better recruiter than Joe Paterno.

  “Do you want to meet the Sugar Man?” he would ask. They always said yes.

  “Great, and bring some friends with you.”

  At the hotel, after exchanging small talk, the evening began. I didn’t know their names. I didn’t care. We weren’t there to make friends. The first choice was mine.

  “James, the one in the red dress,” I’d say, and, presto, the woman and I would retreat to my bedroom, leaving the boys to fight over the rest. From what they told me, they did just fine. As much as they wanted to, the boys could not accommodate everyone, the rejects told their services were no longer required. A few didn’t take the dismissal very well, waiting outside in the hallway for another chance. It wasn’t a matter of money; these women weren’t getting paid. They just wanted to be with the champ.

  I messed around back in Maryland as well. The only difference there was that being that close to my wife and child, the guilt got to me at times. It must not have been that bad. It didn’t stop me. Nothing did.

  The nights were not the problem. When I was in the middle of the act, I had the time of my life. I didn’t think about Juanita or little Ray. These women treated me as if I were a god, and I can’t think of many men who would have resisted. Only after the sex was over, my needs satisfied, did I remember I was a married man breaking my vows once again. It would be three or four in the morning, I’d be in the arms of a stranger who was sound asleep, and all I could think about was that I had to get home before daylight arrived. When I saw the light, I would cry, and not because I was afraid of how Juanita might react. I could usually talk myself out of any trouble or I would buy her an expensive gift if talking didn’t work. All would be forgiven . . . until the next time, and there would always be a next time. The reason I cried was because in the light, no longer protected by the darkness, I saw the ugly reality of who I had become.

  I couldn’t have engaged in such despicable behavior without a little help, and I am not referring to James Anderson or any of the boys. I am referring to the presence of alcohol, and eventually cocaine, which began to take over my life during the early eighties. There I go again, searching for a convenient scapegoat. If it wasn’t my evil twin, Sugar Ray, the booze or drugs had to be responsible for my transgressions. The fact is that I put those substances into my body, me, Ray Charles Leonard, not some character I invented.

  An early indication that something was wrong came in the winter of 1982 while I was training for Bruce Finch, my first fight after Hearns.

  Finch was like Larry Bonds, a routine payday before I took on another highly touted contender. As a matter of fact, Finch had lost to Bonds in 1977, a knockout victim in the fifth round. No wonder I found it difficult to get fired up in training camp. Still, I wasn’t too worried, and neither was anyone on my team. Once I got back into the rhythm of running and hitting sparring partners, there was no question that I’d be prepared for the fight, slated for February 15 in Reno, Nevada. I was a champion, and that’s what champions did.

  Not this champion. I looked for any excuse to take a break, such as the time Juanita and I got into another heated argument only days before the fight. I don’t remember what it was about, though I’m sure she accused me of sleeping with another woman and I’m sure she was right. Our disputes were rarely about anything else. Instead of calling a friend, which would have been the mature thing to do, I hung out in my hotel suite with four bottles of vodka. Vodka is no friend. Vodka never tells you the truth.

  Drinking the first minibar bottle, I thought: What the fuck are you doing? You have a fight in a couple of days and you never drink this close to a fight. Finch, if flawed, was still a professional boxer capable of landing a knockout punch. Drinking the second, I stopped worrying about Finch. On the third and fourth bottles, I forgot why I started to drink in the first place. Little did I realize that these desperate escapes into alcohol, and, later, cocaine, would soon become an almost daily occurrence, and that they weren’t really escapes at all. I was not free. Furthest thing from it.

  Then came the fight itself, before about seven thousand fans at the Centennial Coliseum in Reno. For the record, I sent Finch to the deck twice in the second round, and again in the third. He got up each time, but referee Mills Lane saw enough, stopping the fight with about a minute to go in the third. To the reporters and fans, the night went as expected, a simple title defense against an ex–club fighter clearly out of his league.

  The victory was anything but simple. Finch connected in the second with a combination that made me realize I was in a fight. I was alert enough to keep the damage hidden, but that was why I pursued him aggressively from then on. I wanted to finish it as quickly as possible before Finch, and the crowd, discovered I wasn’t at my best.

  The problem wasn’t physical. It was mental. I was thinking about everything except how to take out Bruce Finch. I had assumed any troubles in motivation would vanish the minute the bell sounded. They always had before, even when the competition was weak. Except that in those days I was on a mission to win a title, each conquest bringing me closer. Now, with the belts secured, Duran and Hearns vanquished, the passion for boxing was almost gone. Another sign came after the fight, when I saw Finch and his family in tears. I told them I was sorry. Fighters do not apologize. We may embrace our opponents. We may applaud them for their courage. We do not apologize.

  In the van on our way back to the hotel, the strangest thing happened. No one spoke. Normally, Janks or Angelo or one of the boys or my father would compliment me on a punch I threw or a move I made. This time, nothing I did deserved any praise. I felt as if I were going to a funeral. I should have been mad at myself. Instead, I was mad at them. I spent the rest of the evening in my room alone, sulking, acting like a child. It wasn’t the first time.

  Over the next few days I gave some thought to retiring but I wasn’t serious. At twenty-five, I was entering the prime of my career and I wasn’t about to stop being Sugar Ray Leonard. I was just in a rut. I’d come out of it.

  By early spring, I was training for my next opponent, Roger Stafford, the bout scheduled for May 14 in Buffalo, New York. Following Stafford, the future possibilities included WBA light welterweight champion Aaron Pryor and the man everyone was talking about, Marvelous Marvin Hagler. Some may have assumed that because Hagler was a middleweight, there was too great a discrepancy in our weight divisions, that I would not bulk up to 160, and he would not slim down to 154. Nonetheless, after I survived Hearns, it seemed almost inevitable that Hagler and I would meet someday. The public would demand it, and when it does, the authorities in boxing find a way to make the fight. The payoff would be too enormous to resist.

/>   Stafford was no Hearns but he was no Finch, either. The previous November, he knocked Pipino Cuevas down in the second round and won a unanimous decision, which The Ring chose as the top upset of 1981. If I was not at my best, I could very well lose my title, and any chance for a payday with Hagler.

  While training for Stafford, however, my mood was as lousy as it had been for Finch, if not worse. I usually looked forward to the sparring sessions. I loved beating up my partners and entertaining the fans, many of whom could never afford the high ticket prices for a real fight. I spent extra time deciding which colors I’d wear into the ring. I wanted everything to be perfect.

  That was not the case in preparing for Stafford. I got dressed at the last minute and gave the absolute minimum effort when I worked out. It did not help that the fight was to be staged in Buffalo. Nothing against the fine citizens of Buffalo, but it is always cold there, even in late April. One weekend, I felt so empty that I went back to Maryland and consumed three or four glasses of wine at dinner with Juanita. I was trying to be a fighter and a civilian at the same time. It is not possible.

  As it turned out, a cranky disposition was the least of my problems.

  It started on the fourth day in Buffalo. I noticed spots out of my left eye that I’d never seen before. I didn’t pay too much attention at first. Either I was more weary than I thought or I had been staring too long into the sun. I didn’t tell anybody, figuring the spots would disappear. Little things like that came up all the time during training and were gone in a day or two. When I did tell a few people in camp, they told me not to worry. Everybody gets these spots, they said. I went back to working out, looking for a reason to get fired up about Roger Stafford.