The Big Fight

by Sugar Ray Leonard

  It was not until the session was done that it hit me: What the hell is wrong with you? You are the welterweight champion of the freaking universe and you just knocked down a sailor who works on the Queen Elizabeth II. You could have hurt him bad! Maybe it was my head, not my eye, that needed to be examined. As for the eye, I was relieved that the punch did no apparent damage, though putting gloves on only a few months after surgery must rank among my dumbest decisions, and the list is long. At the same time, the applause felt wonderful. I missed fighting more than I was willing to admit.

  While the leaves began to change colors, one reporter after another wanted to know if I’d ever fight again.

  As usual, I was vague enough to give off signals in both directions, which indicated how confused I was. Juanita, my mom, and what seemed to be the entire free world, judging from the mail I received, felt the same as they did in the spring when I had the operation. With my finances and faculties in order, why should I take the risk? I understood where they were coming from, and at times agreed with them. Other times, I felt that at my age there was still so much for me to accomplish. The end of my career would come soon enough.

  In October, I flew to Brockton, Massachusetts, to tape an interview with Marvin Hagler for HBO. I had begun to do quite a bit of work for the cable network, which was becoming a more prominent player in boxing. When we sat down in his backyard, I was impressed by the tranquillity of the surroundings and what they said about the man himself. He was at peace. He did not need the spotlight to make him whole.

  As Hagler and I talked, I could not help but wonder: Why was I asking the questions instead of answering them?

  Dr. Michels had assured me that I would not be risking any greater damage to my eye than normal if I decided to compete again. I could call Mike Trainer and he’d initiate talks with Hagler, Pryor, or anyone else and put together an attractive matchup in no time. As for the public, they might question my wisdom at first, but would eventually welcome me back with open arms. In any case, interviewing Hagler was tougher than I imagined. During a break, I drank about two or three Long Island Iced Teas, my favorite alcoholic beverage. I went back to finish the interview, but Ross Greenburg, my boss at HBO, took one look and had me drink a few cups of coffee. Ross always knew what to do whenever I lost my bearings. He was issuing instructions in a production meeting for an upcoming telecast once when I took out a vial of coke and a spoon and had a hit right there at the conference table. He kept talking as if nothing happened.

  As the weeks went by, I changed my mind every day, if not every hour. The only firm decision I made was that I’d make a formal announcement about my plans on November 9 at the Baltimore Civic Center in a program entitled “An Evening with Sugar Ray.” I could never do anything quietly, could I? I invited family and friends, including Howard Cosell, who kindly agreed to be master of ceremonies. We sold tickets at two dollars apiece, the proceeds going to a fund to provide summer jobs for kids in Baltimore. The night promised to have all the excitement of a title fight . . . except for the fight itself.

  About a week before the announcement, I made the decision: I would retire. I could not imagine going against my fans. I wanted more than anything to please them while I was in the ring, and the same desire carried over to leaving the ring. If I resumed my career, I’d be violating the trust they had placed in me since the Olympics, when, of everyone in the fight game, I was the lucky one chosen to succeed Ali. By yielding to common sense, I’d demonstrate that their faith in me was well deserved, that I was, indeed, the rare prizefighter to exit the stage at the proper time. I revealed my feelings in a Sports Illustrated cover piece, set to hit the newsstands a few days after the ceremony in Baltimore. The byline said it all: “by Ray Charles Leonard, as told to Pat Putnam,” the magazine’s boxing writer. I was Ray now. Sugar Ray belonged in the past.

  When the night arrived, the suspense in Baltimore was exactly the mood I was looking for. Nobody, not even Juanita or Mike or my parents, knew for sure what I would tell the crowd. The trouble was, neither did I.

  I thought I knew. Why else would I have agreed to the SI interview? Yet while I waited in the dressing room, as the crowd, which included Ali and Hagler, took their seats, I began to have second thoughts. There was only one way to regain control.

  “Give me my medicine,” I told Kenny and Joe Broddie, who carried it with them.

  That’s what I called coke, as if it were a prescription to make me feel better, which I suppose it did. I took a few hits but I still wasn’t relaxed. I took a few more. The extra hits did the trick. The boys checked the outside of my nostrils to make certain there was no residue of powder. Imagine if I had missed a spot and it was caught on camera. I could have retired and been arrested on the same night.

  Howard seized the microphone in the makeshift ring that had been set up and the event got under way. While the approximately seventy-five hundred fans in attendance saw highlights of my greatest fights, I couldn’t help but think back to my first pro bout against Luis Vega, staged in this very same arena five years earlier. A lot had happened in those five years. I had grown from a boxer into a fighter, a boy into a man. My mind continued to wander as Ali entertained the crowd. It was only six years since Charlie Brotman and I visited with him in his dressing room at Yankee Stadium before the Norton fight. It was a lifetime ago.

  I could delay the announcement no longer. I took the stage. I reminded myself to speak slowly, assuming that the cocaine would speed up my normal delivery. I paused after every few words.

  Staring at Hagler, I was tempted to tell the audience I was ready to take him on. I never ran from a challenge in my life. Knowing my flair for the dramatic, many expected me to do just that, including Marvin, the dollar signs no doubt already flashing in his mind. But I couldn’t. The commitment wasn’t there. That’s when I knew it was over.

  “A fight with this champion,” I said, “would be one of the greatest in boxing history. This is the only man that could make it possible . . . but, unfortunately, it will never happen.”

  Someone in the crowd called out: “Does that mean you won’t fight anyone?”

  “That’s it,” I said. “That’s it.”

  The crowd reaction was mixed, most relieved that I was putting my health first, others disappointed about the battles that would never take place.

  Hagler was more than disappointed. He was disgusted. Convinced that he was asked to be at the ceremony because I planned to announce my intention to fight him, he felt used. That wasn’t the truth. I wanted him there in case I decided I was coming back. I didn’t know what I’d say till I said it.

  After being among the last to leave the arena, about a dozen of us drove to a cozy restaurant in the Little Italy section of Baltimore to celebrate.

  Celebrate what? As one person after another came over to congratulate me, I smiled and kept pretending everything was wonderful. It was not. I was dying inside, just as I was on the podium in Montreal after I won the gold. The finality of it all hit me with the force of a Hearns right hand, and there would be no turning back. The public would not permit it. Before long, I was wasted.

  9

  “I Am Back”

  Without me in the picture, there were still titles to be taken, money to be made.

  The WBA and WBC crowns, which I vacated, were seized in 1983 by Donald Curry and Milton McCrory while Hearns moved up to the light-middleweight ranks to capture his own title, outdueling another former adversary of mine, Wilfred Benitez, in fifteen rounds. Hagler, meanwhile, as ferocious as ever, knocked out Tony Sibson in the sixth round, Wilford Scypion in the fourth. Even Duran, now in his early thirties, was back in decent form, on a mission to make everybody forget New Orleans. All the great fighters from my era were doing what they did best.

  Almost all. I was in a much different fight and losing badly, the plunges into alcohol and coke more frequent, and dangerous, than before. With my departure from the sport official, gone was any possibility of an immin
ent return to the world I relied on to avoid the pain. Without any warning, I’d be reminded of the two men who sexually abused me. Or the memory of my parents cursing one another, screaming, wailing, and out of control, would suddenly overwhelm me.

  I carried on as best I could, the commentary I did for HBO, as well as CBS, giving me a chance to spend time in an environment I cherished, and with people I admired. It became tough, though, come fight night, when the old jitters reappeared, except that I would be putting on my tuxedo instead of my trunks, and it would not matter what I saw in my bathroom mirror. Yet once the bell rang, I was relieved to be sitting in the front row, where left hooks were not allowed. I clearly had made the right decision.

  At home, carrying on wasn’t as easy. Spending time with Juanita made me realize that we should have never been married in the first place, and that was entirely because of me, not her. I wasn’t ready to fully commit in January 1980, when we tied the knot, and I wasn’t ready three years later. We were too young when we fell in love, me only sixteen, Juanita fifteen, knowing almost nothing about the world and ourselves. Only a year later, we were parents, of which we knew even less. Then came the Games in Montreal and my pro career and the train that could not stop, the train I did not want to stop. I wasn’t equipped to handle the demands of both fame and matrimony. One had to lose out, and one did.

  Juanita did everything she could to keep us together. She even snorted cocaine with me. She felt that if she could be as cool as the women I partied with, I would not need to party with them any longer. She and I once did coke from midnight until around eight or nine the next morning. We did so much her nose began to bleed.

  “That’s it,” Juanita said. “I will never do any coke again.” She never did. I wish I could have been as strong as she was. She wasn’t anything like those other women and stopped trying to be. She was better. I was also ashamed to have her see me in that condition. I was used to doing coke with people I barely knew. I didn’t care what they thought. But I had known Juanita since before there was a Sugar Ray, and never wanted her to think any less of me.

  If that was my goal, I failed miserably, and it wasn’t just the nights when I was away. The nights I was at home were often worse.

  I would stumble into bed, drunk or high or both, and demand sex, and if Juanita didn’t give it to me, I’d accuse her of having boyfriends she didn’t have. To her credit, she didn’t back down. She would search the house for my cocaine and flush a gram or two down the toilet. That’s when we’d have our loudest arguments. We made Cicero and Getha Leonard look like Ozzie and Harriet.

  Soon, a full year had passed since retirement number two. On the actual anniversary, in fact, I was in Las Vegas to do the commentary for the Duran-Hagler fight. Marvin was a heavy favorite, as Duran, despite impressive wins earlier in 1983 against Cuevas and Davey Moore, was considered past his prime. Nonetheless, he put forth a tremendous effort, almost pulling off the upset, and that’s when he told me how I could succeed against Hagler by boxing him. They were the first kind words Duran had said to me since we taped the 7UP commercial in the summer of 1980. I found it amusing that the other boxers felt much more at ease talking to me after I was no longer a threat. That was not a problem for me. I could have a friendly chat with my opponent in the weeks leading to a fight and still want to kick his ass once the bell rang.

  Several hours after the fight, in my hotel suite, I paused to reflect on what Duran said to me and I got excited. Come to think of it, I always got excited after watching Hagler in action. I realized that he was not as invincible as the media made him out to be. He was as flawed as the rest of us, and I knew exactly how to take advantage of those flaws. I’d box him just as Duran had suggested. That’s what he did for fifteen rounds. But when the sun came up the next morning, the excitement was gone. If there was a way to outmaneuver Hagler, someone else would have to try. I was not ready to face anyone, let alone the best pound-for-pound fighter on the planet.

  Nonetheless, I continued to work out two or three times a week. Which is why when Kenny and his good friend J. D. Brown asked me to take part in an exhibition entitled “Holiday Salute to the Armed Forces,” which they were planning for Andrews Air Force Base outside D.C. on December 10, I agreed without hesitation. In addition to supporting Kenny, I’d be able to do two things I loved: boxing and performing in front of the public. I saw the evening as nothing more than that, an exhibition.

  I couldn’t show up, however, without bringing my A game—well, at least the closest I could come to one after not boxing at all for twenty-two long months. I’d be taking on professional fighters, not a sailor on the QEII, and if I wasn’t sharp, physically and mentally, it would become obvious in a hurry. I could get hurt. Worse, I could get humiliated. If I no longer had my career, I did have my reputation. Almost every day for over a month I trained, not for a Duran or a Hearns, perhaps, but enough to hold my own against the two fighters I would be facing at Andrews for three rounds apiece, Odell Leonard and Herman Epps. I was thrilled to be back in the gym, my home away from home. I wasn’t thrilled to be back at Mount Motherfuck, but the grueling runs were essential. They always were. I didn’t notice any profound changes right away, but as the days wore on, I began to realize how much I missed my old life. I felt like a fighter again.

  I told Mike Trainer and he didn’t read much into it. Mike was used to me toying with the possibility of making a return and then dropping the entire matter. I once told him to meet me in his office the following Monday morning to make plans for a comeback. When I showed up, I never brought the matter up and neither did he. Mike, if truth be told, would have been happy to see me retire as far back as the Benitez fight in 1979, and when I did finally quit, he thought I had made the correct decision. I also called Charlie Brotman to suggest he invite a group of reporters to the exhibition. I wasn’t ready to announce a comeback just yet, but thought it would be convenient to have the press around in case that’s what I decided.

  The final test would come in the only place it could, the ring.

  There was no title at stake, but I was as nervous as I could be when I stepped between the ropes inside Hangar 3 at Andrews in front of only the press, employees from the Department of Defense, and air force personnel. I was fit enough, weighing 151 pounds, but still could not tell where my mind was and would not be sure until I threw my first punch and the first punch hit me.

  Within a few seconds, the answer came: I was totally into it. I was thinking my way around the ring, plotting the next move like a chess match, the way I always fought, except against Duran in Montreal. I experienced the familiar rush I got whenever I landed a good shot and could not wait to land the next one. I was moving well, too, slipping one punch after another. I was so comfortable that I took off my headgear and put it back on only after I was ordered to by the officials. I felt the same feelings I had in the workouts and knew I’d be foolish to ignore them. In the third round, I put Epps on the deck. Against Odell Leonard, I was in command from start to finish. The six rounds went by in a flash. I could have easily gone six more.

  When I met with the reporters afterward, I made it official.

  “Are you going to make a comeback?” they asked.

  “It’s not a comeback,” I said. “I am back.”

  Telling Juanita was another matter entirely. Nobody was happier than she was on that evening in Baltimore. She had wanted me to retire on so many occasions, I lost count, and it was not just about getting me away from the ring and the risk I took every time the bell rang. For Juanita, retirement meant the demise of the one man who constantly got between her and her husband. She loved the life boxing gave us but she hated Sugar Ray. Unfortunately, as she soon discovered, I did not need to be an active fighter to play the part. Sugar Ray could survive on alcohol and coke and the attention he received from his boys and his fans, and no amount of fancy jewelry and luxury cars he gave his wife could begin to make up for the pain he inflicted. She was running out of hope, until the
fall of 1983, when she learned she was pregnant. If Juanita could not save our marriage, perhaps a baby could. We had been trying for more than a year, Juanita even taking fertility pills. We tried despite our problems, or rather, because of them. I was in Vegas when she put Ray Jr. on the phone to relay the news. I was so excited I almost took the next flight home.

  Now, only a few months later, before the child could be born, Juanita would have to be told that I was headed back to the world she dreaded.

  I could not have picked a worse time. She was in the hospital, suffering from something called hyperemesis, an illness causing nausea and dehydration. When I arrived from the exhibition, she was sound asleep. I lay down quietly in the cot next to her bed, praying to come up with the right words when I knew there were none. I fell asleep as well.

  The next morning, she could tell something was up.

  “Ray, where are you going?” Juanita said.

  “To talk to some reporters, that’s all,” I told her.

  “For what?” she asked. She didn’t wait for an answer. “You’re going to fight again.”

  I couldn’t lie, not this time. She expressed her disapproval, but I was soon out the door. I was not one to offer long explanations, and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I had made up my mind.

  Why was I coming back, and wouldn’t I be going against the very fans whose opinions supposedly meant the world to me? Wouldn’t they perceive me as just another hardheaded fighter who couldn’t stay away, who needed the adulation—and the money—he could not obtain anywhere else? I took pride in making a clean getaway from a sport in which there are few happy endings. I would be throwing that distinction away for good.