One Punch from the Promised Land

by John Florio

Throughout the first six rounds, the plan seemed to be working. But either due to battle fatigue or a cocaine hangover, Leon tired in the seventh. Running out of steam, he reverted to his old habit of standing straight up, which made him an easier target.

  Angelo Dundee, Ali’s longtime trainer, had spent the night exhorting his fighter to get off the ropes. Now he saw Leon sucking in gallons of air through his open mouth. Before the bell rang to start the eighth, Dundee urged Ali to finish off the young challenger. Leon had made Dundee nervous ever since the night Dundee saw him do away with Pedro Agosto at Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis.

  In his memoir, My View from the Corner, Dundee recalled spotting Leon at five o’clock on the morning of the Agosto fight. “I caught Leon getting out of a cab, kissing his lady friend of the evening, or morning, or whenever, goodbye, and then taking a swig out of a bottle—no glass, mind you, that would have wasted a step, just straight out of the bottle. That night he went into the ring and cold-cocked his opponent, Pedro Agosto, in one round. Now that’s tough.”

  Dundee shouted at Ali before the bell. “He’s starting to stand up, this kid. That’s his style, you’ll nail him.”

  Ali responded by staying light on his feet throughout the eighth, stinging Leon with laser-like jabs. The thousands of fans who had paid a total of $756,300 to pass through the Hilton Pavilion turnstiles were now on their feet, whooping and bellowing.

  But Leon had a reserve of energy and weathered the storm. When the bell rang for the ninth round, he glanced over at Michael for reassurance and then returned to his electric bob-and-weave agenda. Ali leaned against the corner post and covered up as Leon fired a seventeen-punch salvo of hooks, crosses, and uppercuts. He didn’t slow down until the final seconds of the round, when Ali let loose with a combination that staggered Leon. But that didn’t stop Leon from giving Ali an affectionate pat on the butt as the bell clanged and Leon headed back to his corner.

  Ali’s handlers were encouraged by the champion’s late burst.

  Bundini Brown, Ali’s ever-present sidekick, was one of them.

  “Beautiful,” Brown said as Ali slumped down on his stool, trying to regain his breath.

  “He’s ready, he’s ready,” Dundee told Ali. “Let’s go to work. Bury him. The left will take him out.”

  But Ali couldn’t bury Leon. The best the champ could do was back him up and bombard him with combinations. Ali took the tenth and eleventh but Leon was still pumping in the twelfth. For every punch Ali threw, Leon retaliated with at least one of his own. Neither fighter gave an inch. At the end of the twelfth, the bout was even: Judge Harold Buck had it 114–114; Judge Lou Tabat had it 115–113 for Leon; and Judge Art Lurie had it 116– 112 for Ali.

  It all came down to the final three rounds. Ali knew his way around this part of a match; he had taken bouts from the likes of Frazier, Norton, and Shavers in the so-called championship rounds. For his part, Leon had never gone more than ten.

  It’s no wonder the Hilton crowd was stunned when, in the thirteenth, Leon blew in like a tornado. The spectators weren’t privy to the exchange in Leon’s corner before the bell sounded. Neither were the viewers at home, since CBS had cut to a commercial while keeping its cameras rolling. After the fight, replays of the raw footage revealed a curious scene.

  “You’re doing it, baby! You’re doing it!” the balding, moon-faced Solomon could be heard shouting at Leon. “But I want you to keep that left hand going.” Then, while holding an unmarked brown bottle, he told Leon to spit out his water so “I can give [you] some juice.”

  Nobody will ever know for certain what was in that bottle—although it’s reasonable to assume it was more refreshing than lemonade. Leon’s pals from the DeSoto suspected it might have been honey water, an innocuous mix of sugar water and mint used by Kenny Loehr to relax his fighters’ stomachs during a fight. Veteran trainer Emanuel Steward watched the fight and had no idea what was in the bottle, although he’d heard of cornermen juicing their fighters with a home brew of orange juice, honey, and cocaine. Years after the fight, Milt Bailey, the legendary cutman who worked Leon’s corner that night, admitted to mixing some quasi-legal concoctions for his fighters, one of which was a mixture of ammonia, water, and peppermint schnapps.

  While the exact contents of the bottle remain a mystery, there’s no doubt that Leon’s punches in the thirteenth and fourteenth regained the potency they’d been missing in the middle rounds. Leon threw sharp combinations and took it to Ali.

  With three minutes left, Dundee tried desperately to wake up his fighter.

  “This is the ballgame,” he implored Ali. “You got to go out and win this round big, real big. Look at him over there; he’s out on his feet; he’s shot his bolt. Hit him and he’ll go.”

  Across the ring Solomon was in his fighter’s ear, pumping him with words of encouragement. He was sure Leon could take the title if he ended the night on his feet.

  “Don’t get careless now, understand?” Solomon shouted at Leon, his voice smothered by thunderous cheering.

  Leon nodded, sweat drenching his face, neck, and shoulders. Don’t get careless. Stay off the ropes. Wiggle. Had Solomon stepped aside—and maybe he knew not to—Leon may have lowered his guard at the sight of Ali slumped on his stool, an almost lifeless figure succumbing to the forces of gravity.

  Solomon wasn’t the only one to sense an upset. The crowd, fearing the end of Ali’s mythic reign, was on its feet trying to will its hero to victory.

  “Ali! Ali! Ali!”

  Millions of television viewers were doing the same in their living rooms. By now CBS’s share of home viewers had risen to 71 percent in New York, 62 percent in Chicago, and 60 percent in Los Angeles. Before the fight a CBS executive had approached Ali and asked him to let the fight go a few rounds so the prime-time audience would have something to watch. The network had been billing Leon as the real-life Rocky Balboa. Word was out that it might be true.

  Solomon’s advice didn’t stick with Leon for long. From the moment the bell rang to start the fifteenth, he and Ali were both swinging for knockouts. Some called the round a phenomenal display of heart; others called it a street brawl. For Leon, it was risky. He didn’t seem to care that he was battling an experienced champion. He had only two speeds—turbo and sleep—and he opened the throttle. He was “The Wild Bull of Camp Lejeune.”

  The Bull landed cutting blows—all of them zeroing in on Ali’s head—but the champ unloaded vicious combinations of his own. Leon stumbled from an Ali right, but quickly recovered his footing and snapped back with a two-fisted assault. The energy in the ring amped up as quickly as the clock wound down. Ali tried to put Leon away, to pummel him back into obscurity. But Leon seemed to gather strength as he and the champ slugged their way deeper into the round.

  More chants of “Ali! Ali! Ali!”

  No doubt, Ali saw the openings. But some insidious, invisible opponent—most likely age but possibly Solomon’s brown bottle—made penetrating those openings an uphill battle.

  Leon launched haymaker after haymaker. A hard left staggered the tired champion. Ali looked as if he might tumble to the canvas, but he righted himself and came back with a perfectly executed combination. A minute later Leon connected with a left uppercut that stopped Ali, but again the champ retaliated with a flurry of his own.

  When the bell rang, Ali patted Leon on the shoulder and then trudged back to his corner and collapsed on his stool, a far more humble man than the godlike figure that had entered the arena sixty minutes earlier.

  Leon’s handlers rushed to congratulate their fighter. Michael tore through the ropes, joining in the celebration. Leon’s circle was obviously convinced the decision would go their way. This was quite an assumption. No contender had taken the heavyweight title by decision since 1935, when James J. Braddock dethroned Max Baer. Not to mention that Ali’s fights had become notorious for questionable outcomes, usually favoring the champ.

  The frenzy died down when ring announcer Chuck Hull steppe
d to the microphone.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a split decision.”

  A spike of moans and boos bit into the air but then quickly melted away.

  “Judge Art Lurie scores 143–142, Ali.”

  A few cheers rang out but then the arena grew anxiously silent again as Hull read the two remaining scores.

  “Judge Lou Tabat scores 145–140, Spinks.”

  Again, the crowd let out with a smattering of cheers and boos.

  “Judge Harold Buck scores 144–141.” Hull then paused before declaring, “The new heavyweight champion of the world, Leon Spinks.”

  Screams rang out, arms shot up in the air, tears gushed. Leon had pulled off the impossible. He’d been given nothing in life other than a pair of fists and he’d used them to pummel his way out of Hell and into the Promised Land.

  Cornermen, insiders, and newfound friends piled onto their hero like a swarm of ants on a breadcrumb. They hoisted the new champion onto their shoulders; in midair Leon thrust his still-wrapped hands to the sky and turned his face to the heavens, his black hole of a mouth stretched open, his eyes squeezed shut as if in rapturous prayer. His sculpted body glistened under the blinding lights, a diamond bouncing on a blanket of red velvet sweat suits.

  Boos and catcalls rang out from Ali fans, but they were merely background noise to the real party going on.

  In post-fight interviews Ali’s team came up with a litany of excuses: The champ hadn’t trained, he had spent too much time on the ropes, he’d been robbed by the judges. In a few hours they would also cry foul about Solomon’s magic bottle.

  Ali, though, took the defeat with class. As he made his way through the crush of Leon’s well-wishers, he congratulated the new champ.

  “You upset the world tonight,” he said to Leon in the center of the ring.

  “Just like you used to,” Leon said. “Thanks for the shot.”

  Leon meant every word. After the fight he went to the ex-champ’s dressing room, kissed him on the cheek, and told him “good fight.”

  Then he headed back to his hotel room, only to find seventy-five reporters and celebrity seekers squeezed into the modest two-bedroom suite.

  Hiding his swollen eyes behind a pair of oversized sunglasses, Leon lacked the bravado usually associated with champions in the testosterone-driven sport. About Ali he said, “He’s still the greatest. I’m just the latest.”

  Then he answered questions as best he could, but he had never been good with words and wasn’t about to change simply because he’d won the title. I want to be the best. He didn’t think I was as strong as I was. I want to retire while I’m young. Clichés, sentence fragments, rambling thoughts. It wasn’t what the world expected from the heavyweight champion. Then again, the world had gotten used to Ali.

  Still, boxing’s rainmakers happily embraced Leon as the new champion. CBS executive Robert J. Wussler had big plans for him, figuring that Leon’s refreshing candor, crude brawling style, and up-from-the-ghetto success story would make him more of a people’s champ than Ali had ever been. But to get at Leon, Wussler would have had to cut through a thicket of shysters and charlatans that had already encircled him. As one sports columnist put it, Leon arrived in Vegas alone, but left “surrounded by smiling thieves.” Michael was painfully aware of the predators that instantaneously descended on his brother. Years later, he would recall how the “bad things” started the minute the fight ended.

  Those bad things surely included a festering power struggle in Leon’s corner. Veteran sportswriter Jerry Izenberg, who’d just finished covering the fight for the Newark Star-Ledger, ran into George Benton at the Hilton coffee shop. There he heard the extent of the infighting.

  “It’s about one o’clock in the morning,” Izenberg recalls. “George is sitting alone having a sandwich. So I walked over and sat down, and we were talking about the fight. George said, ‘It was a fuckin’ miracle. The other guy didn’t try very hard tonight and I was able to help Leon a little bit. But you know what I had to do to [duck Solomon and] help Leon? I took him into the bathroom of Caesars Palace [the day before the fight] and showed him how I wanted him to throw a jab. And we stood there and I’d say to Leon, ‘Now you do it.’ So whatever help Leon got to win the world heavyweight championship came in the bathroom with George Benton.”

  As for the new champ, he was in his hotel room strapping the WBC and WBA belts across his waist, the way champs do when they pose in Ring magazine. He stood in front of the mirror and repeated the words whose meaning he may never have fully grasped: I’m the heavyweight champion of the world.

  6

  ON FEBRUARY 16, 1978, WHEN THE MORNING EDITION LANDED ON doorsteps around the world, Leon Spinks was as famous as President Jimmy Carter. Maybe more so.

  The New York Times: SPINKS DEFEATS ALI TO CAPTURE TITLE

  The Montreal Gazette: ALI LOSES TITLE; BOXING WORLD IS STUNNED.

  The London Times, below an oversize picture of Leon raising his fists in triumph: NEW WORLD CHAMPION

  Leon had taken the WBC and WBA belts from Ali; he’d also become the twenty-fifth fighter since John L. Sullivan to win the lineal title, or as boxing fans would say, he “beat the man who beat the man.” As history shows, it took a certain personality to thrive under the spotlight—and not every champion had it.

  In the 1930s Joe Louis had become an American icon. He was willing to play the part of a humble black man who knew his “place” in society. He was willing to adhere to a code of conduct furnished by his handlers, and the strategy paid dividends. Throughout America he was a role model to blacks and whites. It didn’t hurt that he stayed in peak fighting shape and held the belt for twelve years. In 1938 he won a symbolic victory over Nazism by beating Germany’s Max Schmeling. When America entered World War II, Louis joined the Army, raised money for war bonds, and recruited for the armed forces. He shilled for Republican presidential nominee Wendell Willkie, endorsed Chesterfield cigarettes, and kept himself relevant in popular culture. The public drank Joe Louis punch and Joe Louis bourbon, swung Joe Louis boxing gloves, and wore Joe Louis hair pomade. By the end of the war, the whitewashed Joe Louis had become the face of America.

  Decades earlier Jack Johnson had confronted a far different set of circumstances. When he beat Tommy Burns in 1908 to become the first black heavyweight champion, celebrations were cast aside in favor of race riots; and boxing promoters scoured farms, factories, prisons, and coal mines for a white challenger who could beat him. The best they could come up with was ex-champion James J. Jeffries, who had swelled to 330 pounds and had retired to his alfalfa farm. Jeffries lost a hundred pounds to face Johnson in the first “Fight of the Century.” But shedding extra poundage didn’t turn back the clock: the “Great White Hope” was TKOed in the fifteenth round.

  Following Johnson’s victory, the revised lyrics of an old Negro spiritual were circulated throughout black communities:

  Amazin’ Grace, how sweet it sounds,

  Jack Johnson knocked Jim Jeffries down.

  Jim Jeffries jumped up an’ hit Jack on the chin,

  An’ then Jack knocked him down agin.

  The Yankees hold the play,

  The white man pulls the trigger,

  But it make no difference what the white man say,

  The world champion’s still a nigger.

  Unlike Louis, Johnson relished stoking the white man’s fire. Refusing to play lackey to white America, he took on the role of devil. One of the most well-known men on the planet, Johnson wore swanky clothes, married white women, flashed a set of gold front teeth, and flaunted his considerable wealth. Legend has it that when pulled over for a fifty-dollar speeding ticket, Johnson gave the cop a hundred-dollar bill and told him to keep the change, that he’d be coming back at the same speed. Eventually, the government ran Johnson out of the country on a trumped-up charge that he was transporting white women across state lines for the purposes of prostitution.

  “Why was it such a big deal that Jack J
ohnson not be heavyweight champion of the world?” sportswriter Robert Lipsyte asks. “Because [the champion] really was this powerful role model. Why else would you care if this guy could beat up white men and fuck white women and taunt opponents and do everything he wanted except for the fact that this title has enormous significance?”

  According to BET founder Robert L. Johnson, “The heavyweight division was a visible sign of escaping some of the indignities of being a black man. If you go back and look at the heavyweight championship, it gave, in the case of black Americans, pride that a black man—when put into a ring where the rules were pretty transparent—could stand up and defeat a white man. That was something you could not even think about in your regular day-today job. You’d get lynched or beaten up or whatever. So when you see Jack Johnson, then Joe Louis, and of course, Muhammad Ali, you see black pride being carried on inside those gloves.”

  Leon didn’t represent black pride, but he did find himself in a similar predicament to Johnson’s. The “Galveston Giant” had had the nerve to take the title from a white man; Leon had had the nerve to take it from Ali. It was straight out of Faust. In beating the unbeatable, Leon was left with an even greater challenge: Replace the irreplaceable. To fill Ali’s shoes, he would have to become the voice for all that he represented: Pruitt-Igoe, the Olympics, the Marines, the blacks, and the have-nots. This was no easy feat for an inarticulate kid from the projects who had little guidance, an eye for the ladies, and a sweet tooth for cocaine.

  The public was waiting. And the spotlight wasn’t going to shine long on an empty stage.

  Jackpot. Leon had just earned $300,000—less Mitt Barnes’s 30 percent—and his next fight would bring him more than ten times as much. And that didn’t include endorsement deals. Butch Lewis was already fielding calls from the US Dairy Association, Coca-Cola, 7Up, and Prudential Life Insurance, and he hadn’t even warmed up yet. If Leon invested wisely, he’d be set for life.