One Punch from the Promised Land

by John Florio

  “I was the recorder for the board, which meant I presented the government’s case. I had to show whether Leon qualified to get out. The government wanted him out, but their guidelines did not support that. There were six or seven officers on the board, and they sat there like a bunch of puppets. They all had the word that he was supposed to get this discharge. I pointed out that he didn’t qualify, but they all voted for it.

  “I had the only dissenting vote. I recorded that and wrote a dissenting opinion. I had my company clerks type it up, because I knew the board would change it if they [could]. Then I got everybody on the board to sign it, and I turned it in. A few days later the board called me up to see a new copy they had typed up. It didn’t lie, but it didn’t mention my dissenting vote.

  “My superiors wanted to get him out before he became an embarrassment to the Marine Corps.”

  Once Leon’s discharge papers came through, he was free, and eager, to start making money in the ring. His timing was perfect, because gold-medal fever had swept the country.

  And sports promoters were anything but immune.

  4

  THE SPINKSES’ PROFESSIONAL CAREERS WEREN’T LAUNCHED IN Montreal—they were ignited by a man from the township of Ridley, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. That was where John L. Lewis, a local businessman and one of Joe Frazier’s original investors, sold used cars. It was also where Frazier bought his Cadillacs, and where the ex-champ befriended the owner’s son, Ronald “Butch” Lewis.

  Butch was a quick-thinking, fast-talking profit machine whose business schooling had been confined to street hustles and small-time grifts. For the flashy five-foot-seven chain smoker, selling used cars was as boring as tallying ledger columns.

  Butch Lewis explained it this way to Phil Berger of the New York Times: “I [grew up relying on] my wits. I had a friend of mine who worked in a jewelry store on Market Street [in Philadelphia]. And I would gather maybe twenty rings—buy ’em in volume for a buck-and-a-quarter apiece—and I’d be out on Market Street telling people these rings were worth three, four, five hundred bucks and all I wanted was fifty dollars. I’d say, ‘Look, you want to appraise it? Go ahead. Take it and have it appraised.’ The guy would go into the jewelry store, where my man was, right? My man puts the eyeglass on and looks at the ring, then says it’s worth fifteen hundred dollars. The other guy comes hurrying out of the store, and he’s happy to give me fifty bucks for a ring that’s worth a dollar and twenty-five cents.”

  John L. Lewis put an end to his son’s flimflamming by setting him up with a job. Before long, Butch was the lot’s top salesman—bringing in more than $75,000 a year—but the job wasn’t enough to stoke his fire. He was far more interested in his friend Joe Frazier’s sweet science than he was in popular mechanics, so he took to flying around the world and attending Smokin’ Joe’s fights.

  The young Lewis often told a story that put him in Kuala Lumpur. There, a group of German businessmen approached the misplaced American and asked if he was a boxing promoter. Lewis was smart enough not to say yes, but too savvy to say no. He simply said nothing. Before he left the country, he had an offer in his breast pocket: three million dollars to bring the winner of Ali-Frazier III to Munich to fight Richard Dunn.

  Lewis seemed to have everything a promoter would need to make the fight: financial backing, a silver tongue, and an uncanny knack for making money. But he was missing the one thing he needed most: a fighter. Could he deliver either Ali or Frazier?

  Getting the green light from Frazier wound up being easy enough—all it took was a phone call. Landing Ali, however, seemed impossible. The champion wanted no part of a promoter who’d never promoted a thing in his life.

  So on October 1, 1975, when the bell rang to start Ali-Frazier III—now known as “The Thrilla in Manila”—Lewis was pulling for Frazier like no other fan on the planet. But any hope of making a Frazier-Dunn fight went out the window when Frazier couldn’t answer the bell to start the fifteenth round.

  Lewis had no choice but to pursue Ali in the hopes of making Ali-Dunn. He withdrew his life’s savings to trail the champion, a chase that began in Manila and had no end in sight. It was a comedy worthy of a Blake Edwards film: Lewis being fed Ali’s itinerary by Ali’s secretary, then zigzagging across the country in hot pursuit. Ali dismissed Lewis, swearing that he’d take the fight only if his business manager, Herbert Muhammad, agreed. Lewis got his hands on Muhammad’s unlisted phone number and called him daily. He also showed up wherever Muhammad happened to be.

  Those who knew Lewis weren’t surprised. Robert L. Johnson, then a lobbyist for the National Cable Television Association and the eventual founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET), developed a close friendship with Lewis years after “The Thrilla in Manila.” His friend’s exploits, he says, were beyond a sane man’s comprehension.

  “Butch was always willing to go to the ends of the earth to try and put together a deal,” Johnson says. “He was the guy who would go in selling a grand vision and he would be amazed if people didn’t see the deal the way he saw it. He would ingratiate himself, or impose himself—however you looked at it—on people in a way that they couldn’t deny his huge, huge charisma and dynamic charm. You had to react to him one way or another.”

  To land Ali, even the energetic Lewis had to kick into overdrive. He told the story to the New York Amsterdam News this way: “Herbert told me to get lost, to go take a hike. But Ali said I could wear him down. Every single morning, Monday to Sunday, every day, every day, I don’t care where I was, I called Herbert. I had telephone bills of, like, $1,700, $2,000 a month. He would wake up to my voice. And Herbert would say, ‘If you call me again, I’ll do this and that. Don’t ever call me again.’ And every single morning, I’d call him. He’d change his number, and I’d call him. He didn’t know how I got his number.

  “Herbert finally told me, ‘Too many people around the world have my phone number. I can’t have it changed [again]. So I’m telling you this for the last time—just don’t call me no more!’ At seven o’clock the next morning, you guessed it. Herbert screamed, ‘Look, if Ali wants you to promote him, you got it. Now leave me alone!’”

  Lewis hopped on a plane to Chicago, found Ali at home, and relayed Muhammad’s message. Ali made good on his promise, and the two men shook hands. But Lewis’s celebration was short-lived. He knew he needed more experience, particularly of the logistical variety, if he planned to stage an event of this magnitude.

  He pitched veteran boxing promoter Bob Arum on the Ali-Dunn fight, which was a slam-dunk, being that Lewis had Ali in his pocket. Lewis and Arum struck a deal, and the duo promoted the event through Arum’s company, Top Rank. But instead of making money, the newly formed partnership wound up in a cash crunch, mainly because the Germans had come up short but also because ticket sales were lagging. They would have been sunk had Ali not saved the day.

  Lewis told Greg Logan of Newsday, “Ali cut his purse by $300,000, and told Herbert [Muhammad] his end would still be the same. He said, ‘I’m not going to let Butch fail.’ Tears came to my eyes, and then he wrote a check for $100,000 worth of tickets and told me to give them free to the American soldiers in Munich and Frankfurt. I was blessed never to look back.”

  Lewis moved up to vice president at Top Rank and got busy. His first order of business was to visit Montreal and ingratiate himself with the five potential paydays sporting shiny new gold around their necks. Of course, he wasn’t the only one with the idea. A swarm of promoters had already descended on the Olympic champions—and many had left empty-handed. Sugar Ray Leonard had signed with a group of Maryland investors. Howard Davis had wriggled off the hook when he struck a deal with two Long Island real estate executives. And Leo Randolph had chosen to finish high school before going pro. That left two fighters in the promoters’ crosshairs: Leon and Michael. Lewis wasn’t about to let them get away. He invited both brothers to the Ali-Norton fight as his personal guests.

  As it turned out, Le
on was an easy sell. He had wanted to turn pro so badly, the day after he won the gold, he’d signed a two-page management contract with a muscle-bound truck driver named Millard Barnes, who went by the name Mitt. Barnes was an organizer for Teamster Union Local 600 in St. Louis; he also ran a small gym in the basement of the downtown Railroad YMCA Hotel. At sixteen Leon had wandered into the YMCA looking for a place to sleep because he was tired of having to share a bed at home. Barnes gave him a cot and a key to the gym, and on occasion, put some money in his pocket. All he asked in return was 30 percent of Leon’s earnings through 1979. In fairness to Barnes, that’s a standard managerial contract. In fairness to Leon, many states don’t require that fighters have managers, so in those states it’s an unnecessary siphoning of funds. Regardless, Leon signed with Barnes and soon found that he also needed a promoter. Managers represent fighters, he learned, but it’s the promoters who put together fights. Without the latter, Leon’s feet would never touch the canvas of a professional boxing ring. So one month after the Ali-Norton fight, Leon inked a three-year promotional deal with Top Rank.

  That left one unsigned medalist: Michael.

  “I knew [Leon] could turn pro right away,” Bob Arum says now. “He had enormous talent. I didn’t think as highly of Michael. But some very astute boxing guys told me that, in their opinion, Michael was better than Leon at that point—that Michael had the real ability, more so than Leon.”

  Lewis told Mark Kriegel of the New York Daily News, “Most of the guys sitting around the coffee shop scouting the Olympics had Michael as the dude least likely to succeed. They said he’s clumsy. They said he’s lucky. But I’m saying to myself, ‘If he’s so lucky, then how come he’s always beating the favorite?’ When I seen him buckle that Russian, I knew. That wasn’t no luck.”

  It’s ironic that Lewis’s interest in Michael had peaked when Michael knocked out Riskiev, because that’s exactly when Michael’s interest in boxing had ended. Michael had no desire to fight beyond the Olympics—he was proud of having a job, and besides, he still had the voice of Kenny Loehr in the back of his head. Although Loehr was a key player in the St. Louis amateur boxing scene, he had little use for the professional side of the sport. He’d even been quoted in the Riverfront Times as saying, “Them guys in the pros are so, what’s the word, corrupt. They’ll put you in the ring when you ain’t ready, just so they can make a payday.” Loehr had always advised his young fighters to avoid the pros and get a “real job.”

  Michael had taken Loehr’s advice. He’d gone back to his job at the Holiday Inn, and his boss had paid him for the days he’d missed while in Montreal. Then he showed his gold medal to his co-workers and they xeroxed copies for themselves. He was where he wanted to be.

  But Lewis was relentless. He kept calling, wooing Michael with talk of the money and the fame that came with professional boxing. Lewis tried every trick in his book, with the exception of selling Michael a discounted ring on Market Street.

  “And, I mean, I’m hitting Mike with everything just to get him to sign with me,” Lewis told the New York Daily News. I’m telling him this, telling him that. I’m telling him, ‘Boy, you gonna miss out on what you been blessed to do.”

  Lewis wasn’t the only one knocking, however. Nick Miranda, a former Pruitt-Igoe neighbor who had become a theatrical agent, had also tried to sign Michael. But Miranda found out what Lewis was just learning: Michael was determined to avoid a boxer’s life, which in his mind meant becoming a palooka and handing his money over to a bunch of sharply dressed, double-talking charlatans.

  Michael’s longtime friends knew the score. “After the Olympics Michael wasn’t interested in turning pro,” James Caldwell remembers. “I think he was helping Leon, so Leon wasn’t out there by himself, ’cause there was so many people making offers to Leon. [Michael] wanted to sit back and watch how the game goes.”

  In the end it was Michael’s pursuit of conventional employment that helped Lewis get his man. The switch came after Michael left the Holiday Inn for what he considered an “office job”—cleaning the offices at the Monsanto Chemical Plant.

  Michael told Earl Gustkey of the Los Angeles Times, “[At Monsanto], I was bringing home $550 every two weeks. Then they transferred me to [another] building to clean bathrooms, where the chemicals were, and I started breathing those fumes. I took this as a demotion, seeing as how I’d had an office job before.

  “One night, I laid down on a cot in the women’s restroom and fell asleep. Well, my supervisor walked in, wakes me up and called me every name under the sun. I’m sitting there, thinking that no way do I want to spend the rest of my life listening to this stuff. I was probably dying sucking in those chemicals anyway. So I said, ‘Sir, I’m going to do you a favor and rid yourself of me.’ I walked out. The next time Butch called, I said, ‘Yeah, Butch, I’m ready.’”

  But Michael’s consent came with a no-bullshit clause. “Right off, I told Butch not to talk about big numbers and give me the lie,” he explained to Sports Illustrated’s Pat Putnam. “I told [Butch] I had been lied to all my life, so he could skip all that and just tell me it like it was. I was going in for me, but mainly I was going in to be with Leon, to help Leon. He’s my brother. He’s very weak in some points. He has a tendency to trust people he shouldn’t. All those smiling faces and shaking hands, and he just trusts. He should check people out. As for me, if I get messed up, I want to do it myself, then I can blame only myself. I don’t want any help. If I fail, I want to fail on my own.”

  Now that both Spinks brothers were in his stable, Lewis walked into the office of Barry Frank, president of CBS Sports, and sold him on airing Leon’s first professional fight in Las Vegas, on January 15, 1977. To Lewis’s delight, Leon was getting his discharge from the Marines and would now be free to take the fight. But Leon went off to celebrate and never returned.

  “I saw right away when we started promoting Leon as a professional what he was,” Lewis’s Top Rank partner Bob Arum says. “Leon didn’t have a mean bone in his body, but he was totally and completely irresponsible. I mean, he was almost childlike. He certainly wasn’t a rocket scientist.”

  Lewis called Mitt Barnes, but Barnes had no idea where Leon had gone. So Lewis called CBS and offered Earnie Shavers as a substitute, but CBS insisted on the young Olympian. By chance, Lewis spotted a small article in a local newspaper that said Leon had been given a traffic ticket for driving with a suspended license in Des Moines, Iowa. It was the holiday season, but Lewis wasn’t about to sit idle and watch his deal with CBS disintegrate.

  Lewis told Pat Putnam of Sports Illustrated, “Here it is, New Year’s Eve, and I’m the only guy on a plane flying to Des Moines. I didn’t know where Leon was in Des Moines. Hell, I wasn’t even sure he was there.”

  Lewis rented a car at the airport, drove to the black neighborhood, and asked the kids hanging out on the corners if they’d seen the young fighter who’d just won a gold medal in Montreal. Eventually, someone directed Lewis to a house nearby. Sure enough, when Lewis knocked on the door, Leon was inside—but Leon said he didn’t want to fight, that he needed some time for himself. Lewis managed to drag his fighter back to Delaware, promising an easy payday. Leon’s opponent was “Lightning” Bob Smith, a butcher’s helper from Brooklyn, New York, who had compiled an unelectric 7–7–1 record.

  “Leon had trained for only eleven days,” Lewis told Sports Illustrated. “I was scared to death he was going to run out of gas.”

  Leon, now fighting as a heavyweight, had enough in his tank to last five rounds, which is when he knocked Smith out. His next bout was in Liverpool, England, where he knocked out Peter Freeman with a right to the jaw midway through the first round. Two weeks later he kayoed Jerry McIntyre, also in the first.

  Boxing writer Ron Olver reported on the Freeman fight in Boxing News. “Leon sure can punch but he wasn’t around long enough to show if he can box, too.”

  For his fourth pro bout, Leon took a hometown fight with a much tougher
opponent, Pedro Agosto, and he gave the Puerto Rican much the same treatment he’d given Freeman and McIntyre. With Kay and Michael watching from ringside, Leon traded blows with Agosto and sent him crashing to the canvas in the first round. Agosto hung on to the ropes and then struggled to his knees, but that was as far as he would get. The referee counted him out at 1:55.

  The following month Leon kayoed Bruce Scott in three rounds, and after five pro fights in four months, he was 5–0 with five knockouts. According to Butch Lewis, Leon was also richer by $65,000, “give or take a few.”

  Phil Berger of the New York Times wrote, “Lewis was a kind of Svengali who chided and guided Leon, and even delivered rousing pre-bout orations that conjured terrible visions of Leon’s St. Louis ghetto as the fate that awaited Leon should he lose…. Leon often had Lewis tracking him like a bloodhound to dingy bars and to hideaways where Leon would meet female friends.”

  Michael tried to help, and he said as much to Pat Putnam in Sport Illustrated. “I saw that Butch needed me to get to Leon. I was the key. Leon did a lot of running off on his own. I’d get Leon back and we’d talk. We’d argue, then he’d be okay. Most of the time, it was very confusing to us. Everything was moving so much. We never were allowed the time together we needed to get our heads straight. As each fight took place, I noticed a lot of shaky things happening. Like we discovered friends of Butch’s selling Spinks T-shirts at one fight. When we asked about the royalties, nobody knew where the money was going. Leon was upset. There was a lot of neglect, a lot of disinterest. We were looking good to the world but going nowhere. And he was having family problems with Nova. He was having so many problems my heart went out to him. You can’t lay too many things on Leon at one time. So I went home and talked it over with mama. She tried to call Leon. She told me she tried to call him through the Top Rank office in New York a lot, and that she got turned away a lot.”