One Punch from the Promised Land

by John Florio

  On February 17, 1981, Leon filed for divorce. Nova’s attorney requested that the circuit court judge of Wayne County, Michigan, order Leon to carry the mortgage on their house in Rosedale Park; pay tuition for Nova’s son, Charles; and pick up five thousand dollars of Nova’s legal bills. The lawyer also asked for Nova’s $375 weekly alimony check to be bumped to $500 should Leon take the title from Holmes.

  The divorce became final in 1982. The bills went unpaid.

  Nova’s attorney may have had his eye on Leon’s upcoming fight with Larry Holmes, but few fight fans did. In their view Leon had virtually no shot against the champion, and it didn’t help when rumors surfaced that Leon had suffered a broken nose in training camp. Most agreed that Holmes took the fight simply to stay active. He had done much the same two months earlier when he defended the title against Trevor Berbick. These no-contests were keeping him sharp while he waited for a payday with rising star Gerry Cooney.

  What many fans didn’t realize was that Holmes had another reason for agreeing to the fight: He harbored a genuine dislike of Leon. In his 1998 autobiography, Larry Holmes: Against the Odds, written with Phil Berger, Holmes said Leon was the first opponent he “truly wanted to hurt.” He also took issue with how Leon had disrespected the heavyweight title.

  “He’d acted like a buffoon of a heavyweight champion,” Holmes wrote. “He was a loose cannon, a guy who exposed himself as a dumb bastard the more you saw of him. I knew he’d end up a jive ex-champ, driving a Cadillac with about three bucks in his pocket and a brain like cornflakes.”

  According to Holmes, the friction had heated up in 1980 at a dinner held in Las Vegas for Joe Louis. Leon had gotten drunk and was going from table to table, plucking souvenir boxing gloves from the centerpieces and throwing them around the room. When he approached the table at which Holmes’s wife, Diane, was seated, she and Leon had a bit of a tussle. It wasn’t long before Holmes’s posse was going at it with everybody in Leon’s camp, including Mr. T.

  Holmes’s trainer Richie Giachetti attended the dinner and recalls, “Spinks was mouthing off, he wasn’t conducting himself the right way, and he embarrassed himself. It was a shame to see it.”

  According to Holmes’s autobiography, “He was loud and obnoxious, and bothering Diane…. I didn’t want to muddy [the event] with violence, so when Spinks let go of the souvenir, and both he and Mr. T relaxed their threatening posture, I backed off. But I marked Spinks for a good butt-whupping, deciding right there I’d try to get him in the ring as soon as I could. Get him in the ring and beat him bad. Hurt him.”

  Boxing fans were far less enthusiastic than Holmes. A week before the “Motown Showdown,” scheduled for June 12, 1981, ticket sales had produced a mere $500,000. Half the seats at Joe Louis Arena were unsold. To spur sales, the fight’s promoter, Don King, dropped the price of the cheap seats from fifty to twenty-five dollars.

  Holmes and Leon tried to build interest in the nonevent. But Holmes was no Ali when it came to hyping a fight. And Leon, despite growing up on the streets, had never learned to talk trash.

  Holmes told the press that Leon had “the perfect style to make me look great” and that beating Leon would be considered his most meaningful victory. He also borrowed one of Leon’s most popular phrases, repeatedly dismissing Leon as “Freaky Deaky” Spinks.

  Leon asked the Associated Press to “tell Larry Holmes he’s got my blessings and I wish him the best of luck, and tell him I’m comin’ for it. I see him at the end of the rainbow with the pot of gold.”

  Holmes responded with, “Who’s he ever beaten? He caught Ali on an off night and won a decision and then Ali got in shape and cleaned up on him in the rematch. He got himself knocked out and he’s beaten nobody since then. If I hit him as many times as Mercado did in their fight, they’d have to carry him out of the ring. Besides, I can’t allow myself to be beaten by Leon Spinks. I wouldn’t be able to show my face back home. I just bought a new Rolls Royce, and I won’t be able to drive it down the street.”

  Continuing the uninspired exchange, Leon told the press, “I’m going to fight him like I fought Muhammad Ali the first time. I’m going to cling to him like a T-shirt. He’s a boxer and I’m a puncher. Holmes is going to try and dance and I’m going to try to keep him from dancing. I’ll just be trying to win. Whether it’s a knockout or not, I don’t care. I just want to win the title back.”

  None of it was enough to bring out the fight fans. On the night of the bout, just three years after Leon had dethroned Ali, ten thousand people filed into the 21,000-seat arena to see him challenge the heavyweight champion of the world.

  This time around Leon had his own cup for the fight. He sat in his dressing room at Joe Louis Arena with his cornermen and his mother Kay, showing no signs of braggadocio. He had to be thinking what the rest of the boxing world already knew: The odds that he’d beat a peaking Larry Holmes were far slimmer than his tackling an over-the-hill Muhammad Ali.

  When Kay Spinks reassured her son that he’d conquer Holmes, Leon said, mildly, “Aw, Mom, shut up. I’ll just do the best I can.”

  He walked out to the ring to the cheers and jeers of the crowd, which included Kansas City Royals baseball players Larry Gura, Frank White, and Amos Otis. They were in town to play the Tigers, but the major league baseball players’ strike suddenly freed up their schedule.

  As champion, Holmes entered the arena after Leon, and to greater fanfare. Decked out in a white satin robe with red trim, he crossed the ropes and danced on his toes. Leon, draped in a burgundy robe, bounced in his corner, stretched his neck, and threw punches into the air. Michael stood next to him, wearing a black shirt, brown vest, white bow tie, black cowboy hat, and sunglasses.

  Leon looked fit, much as he had when he won the title. When the bell rang, he did his best to replicate that miraculous showing. He rushed at Holmes in typical Leon Spinks fashion, trying to get inside, but the champion’s five-inch reach advantage kept him away. Leon swung regardless.

  In his autobiography, Holmes said, “Spinks was charging at me, bobbing and weaving like a disco dancer in a frenzy, trying to get inside my long reach. But he was also firing away like some damn kamikaze in boxing shorts.”

  At the outset, few of Leon’s punches landed, but in the second round he began slipping Holmes’s jab and working the champion’s body. At two minutes and thirty-five seconds into the round, the timekeeper accidentally rang the bell and Holmes eased up, assuming the round was over. His corner even rushed into the ring with their stool. Leon didn’t hear the bell and kept on wailing with wild rights and lefts, but the ring-savvy Holmes protected himself until the bell officially clanged.

  By the third round, though, Holmes adjusted to Leon’s awkward style. He picked at Leon with his world-class jab and then began following it with his right.

  Gerry Cooney sat ringside. Going into the fight, he was convinced that Leon was too small for Holmes and that a fighter of Holmes’s stature would overwhelm him.

  “Holmes is an old pro,” Cooney now says. “When Spinks tried to be the aggressor, Holmes knew how to cover up, take care of himself. He took the fight out of Spinks and then started catching him.”

  Holmes fired off combinations and each punch hit its target. He trapped Leon in the corner and rained blow after blow on his head. When a straight right from Holmes crunched Leon’s jaw, Leon tumbled facedown onto the middle rope, rolled over, and landed hard on his back. Somehow, he got to his feet at the count of nine. Referee Richard Steele asked him if he was OK, and Leon said he was, despite having clearly lost his senses. He was so defeated, even Holmes may have felt compassion for him.

  Holmes said in his autobiography, “I suddenly began to feel sorry for Spinks in spite of the way he had insulted Diane. I stepped back from [him] and yelled at Steele, ‘Stop the goddamned fight. You want me to kill this man?’”

  No one who was ringside that night claims to have heard Holmes cry out to Steele, and no such dialogue appears on the videotape
of the fight. Regardless, Steele allowed one more exchange before coming to his own conclusion: Leon was finished. It didn’t matter because Leon’s trainer Del Williams was in the midst of throwing in the towel, and Michael, his face wet with tears, was rushing up the ringside stairs, desperately screaming to stop the fight. The end came at 2:34 of the third round.

  A dazed Leon was led back to his dressing room as the crowd booed mercilessly. When the door shut, Leon sat for a postmortem with his inner circle. Nobody in the room would say it, but he’d probably just had his last shot at the big time.

  The New York Times’ Michael Katz reported the following exchange between Leon and Del Williams: “‘I’m not giving up,’ Leon said. ‘We just got to go back to the drawing board, right Del?’

  “‘Yes,’ Williams said.

  “‘We got to correct those mistakes.’”

  Williams agreed again, though it was unclear if Leon was trying to convince himself or Williams.

  After shooing away reporters and remaining behind closed doors for more than an hour, Leon emerged. He got into a waiting yellow limousine, swearing he’d get back to basics, train hard, and resurrect his career.

  A few days later he was arrested for carrying an unregistered .357 Magnum in the glove compartment of his car.

  9

  IN “THE ROAD NOT TAKEN,” POET ROBERT FROST WRITES OF FACING a fork in the road and having to choose only one path. The same could be said for Michael, who had to decide between the direction Leon had followed and the one less traveled. By 1979 it had become clear he’d opted for the latter. He lived clean and trained hard—so hard that he had to undergo a knee operation after running on concrete in combat boots.

  “Something had to give,” his doctor told him, “and it wasn’t going to be the concrete.”

  Following surgery Michael took a break from the ring, partly to recuperate but also to keep an eye on Leon, who was still celebrating the championship he’d lost to Ali in New Orleans.

  For Michael, choosing the less popular path meant avoiding the headlines that were still ensnaring his brother. He settled into a quiet life in Philadelphia with his girlfriend, Sandy Massey, a dance instructor and part-time model he’d met after his operation.

  Michael told Sports Illustrated’s Calvin Fussman later in March 1983 that “everybody needs somebody, and I didn’t have nobody after Leon left Philadelphia. I had to stumble around with a big splint on my leg. So Sandy and I had time together. We wound up caring more and more for each other. Sandy showed me things that nobody had ever shown me. Her love. Her care. Her warmth. She was my first and only love. It was pure and golden.”

  With Sandy, Michael focused on building his own life instead of trying to safeguard Leon’s. In 1980 Sandy gave birth to daughter Michelle at Philadelphia’s Booth Maternity Center. A proud new father, Michael returned to the ring—more active, focused, and unbeatable than ever before. In thirteen months he reeled off seven victories, including a four-round TKO over former light-heavyweight champion Marvin Johnson. He built his record to 16–0 and was ranked as the number-one light-heavyweight contender behind WBC champion Matthew Saad Muhammad and WBA champion Eddie Mustafa Muhammad.

  After the Johnson fight, in March 1981, the phone rang in Michael’s Atlantic City hotel room. He picked up the receiver but didn’t recognize the voice. It was opportunity knocking.

  “Hello, you [expletive],” the caller said. “You ain’t done nothin’. You know how gone Johnson was.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “It’s Mustafa.”

  That was short for Eddie Mustafa Muhammad, who, it bears noting, had taken the title from the same Marvin Johnson a year earlier.

  Mustafa had little respect for Michael. The former gun-toting street hustler felt that his ghetto, the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, was tougher than Michael’s St. Louis slum—and he was tired of hearing about the unfortunate hand Michael had been dealt. He also resented the “easy road” paved for Olympic gold medalists.

  Hoping to put an end to the buzz surrounding Michael’s ascent in the rankings, Mustafa Muhammad gave him a shot at the title. The WBA champ signed for a guaranteed $350,000. Michael, despite his gold, signed for $125,000.

  “I don’t worry about Spinks,” Mustafa Muhammad told UPI at the time. “He’s an a-b-c fighter. He just uses the basics. There’s nothing he can do to cause me difficulties. I think he’ll get on his horse and run and that would be a very smart thing for him to do. He’s never met anybody who can go inside like I can.”

  Michael responded to UPI, “I respect him. He’s no pushover, but I know I’m going to win. I don’t plan to stand there and trade with him. I’ll be moving. I’ve got to get off first and then get the hell out of there. I don’t know if I can take a good shot or not, but I don’t want to find out. I’d be a fool to want to find out how hard he can hit. I think I’ll dictate the fight. He’s not going to give the title to me. It will take some convincing, but I’ll manage to do it.”

  The showdown was set for July 18, 1981. Michael and Mustafa Muhammad would settle their differences at the Imperial Palace in Las Vegas.

  In the five years since the 1976 Olympics, Michael was the only gold medalist from the U.S. boxing team who hadn’t yet fought for a title—and the only one still undefeated.

  Leo Randolph had turned pro in 1978 after earning his high school diploma the previous year. He took Ricardo Cardona’s WBA super-bantamweight title in 1980 and then lost it in his first defense against Sergio Victor Palma. He collected his $72,000 purse, retired, and became a bus driver for the city of Tacoma.

  Howard Davis continued training with his father on Long Island. He had been given a shot at Jim Watt’s WBC lightweight title in 1980 but lost in a unanimous decision.

  Sugar Ray Leonard had abandoned his plans to go to college in Maryland, choosing instead the path to the pros. It seemed he had little reason to look back. He’d won the WBC welterweight belt in a TKO over Wilfred Benitez, defended it once, and then lost it to Roberto Duran before regaining it in a rematch. He’d then won the WBA junior-middleweight title and, as Michael was training for Mustafa Muhammad, was prepping for a super-fight against WBA welterweight champ Thomas Hearns.

  Leon, of course, had snatched the title from Ali before drinking, snorting, and womanizing it away.

  Michael was holed up at the Concord Hotel in the Catskills in upstate New York; he kept his training camp lean and spent the days, in his words, “doin’ time.”

  But the differences between the two brothers didn’t end in camp. Unlike Leon, who avoided training and loved to fight, Michael was reluctant to get in the ring.

  In a New York Times profile published five days before the Mustafa Muhammad fight, Michael Katz wrote, “[Michael] does not like boxing, but he is very good at it. He has a powerful and accurate left jab, a fine hook and the famous Spinks jinx, or overhand right. He hasn’t lost a fight in five years, since Keith Broom… outpointed him at Olympic training camp in Vermont.”

  Katz continued, “It was as if [Michael] were wrestling with the loneliness of this sport he does not like, this sport he appreciates only for taking him and his brother Leon out of the ghetto. Training camp is bad enough, but even that does not compare to, [in Michael’s words], ‘the terrifying five loneliest minutes, the time when they knock on your door and say, Mike, you’re on next.’”

  Michael told Katz, “Your mind be doing some funny things in that ring. You be hurting and tired and you’re in there all alone. Your corner be telling you they’re with you and every punch you throw, they’re throwing, too. ‘And every punch I feel, you feel, too?’ you ask them, and they say, ‘Somewhat.’

  “And running, you get so tired you about want to pass out, like that hill [near the Concord Hotel] I call Death. Every day, you’re lookin’ at Death. Then you lie in bed at night and you try not to move, and all of a sudden you’re punching. I wake up in the morning and the sheets and covers are all over the place.”

&n
bsp; Meanwhile, Mustafa Muhammad was facing his own challenges. The twenty-nine-year-old defensive master was fresh off a ten-round loss to heavyweight Renaldo Snipes. It was nothing new for a light-heavyweight to try his hand in the heavyweight division, but the Snipes fight was a particularly bad move for Mustafa Muhammad. He’d barely won a round. Worse yet, he had gained nearly 27 pounds to fight Snipes and now had just two months to lose it.

  The weigh-in was scheduled for 12:30 a.m. so both fighters could sleep late the day of the fight. Michael came in at 173¾ pounds. But when Mustafa Muhammad stepped on the scale, he topped the 175-pound limit by 1¾ pounds. He was given two hours to make weight. The ramifications were huge: If he didn’t lose the weight by 2:30 a.m., he’d be stripped of his title. (He would still be allowed to fight Michael, but only Michael could leave the ring with a title. If Mustafa were to win, the title would be considered vacant.) On the other hand, if Mustafa Muhammad lost the extra poundage in such a short amount of time, he’d also lose a lot of energy, not to mention sleep. He chose the lesser of two evils: Drop the weight.

  There were two hours and 1¾ pounds to go. Preferring not to drain more energy than necessary, Mustafa Muhammad ducked the steam room and brought his entourage to a nearby twenty-four-hour health club. Fellow champ Matthew Saad Muhammad, whose past included its own spate of gang-related blemishes, came along for moral support.

  While Michael was in his hotel room sound asleep, Mustafa Muhammad skipped rope and sweated off the weight. He worked, perspired, and grunted for twelve straight minutes. Then he stepped on the scale. 175¾. He changed into a fresh sweat suit and repeated the drill. 175¼. He changed again, worked some more, but this time didn’t bother wasting time getting weighed. He rushed out of the gym and got back to the hotel at 2:19 a.m. Two minutes later he stood buck naked on the scale, still sweating from the face, neck and ears. His entourage leaned in as the ring official slid the weights along the top and bottom bars. When the balance beam came to rest, the scale read 175 on the nose. His friends jumped, screamed, and hugged as if their man had just beaten the scale by a first-round knockout.