He was considerate of his teammates at the Palmer Park Recreation Center. He even offered to cash in an airplane ticket - provided by officials eager to have him box in an amateur tournament - and rent a van so that all of his teammates could travel. He was egotistical enough to refuse to display his membership card at the entrance. "Everybody knows who I am," he announced.
He was fascinated with imagery and media, quick to grasp that grooming, clothing, manners, and speech projected an image, and that image was a powerful force. Boxing gave him entry into a world of travel, hotels, restaurants, and private clubs that was unknown to his family. "What are the different forks for?" he asked at his first upscale restaurant. He learned to use the appropriate fork, just as he learned to be meticulous about his clothing. He carried a small dictionary to help with vocabulary, and took tap dance lessons to learn graceful movement. Imagery was as vital to Leonard as any punch he could throw or duck. Media, the conduit of images, infatuated him as much as boxing.
From his mother, Getha, came determination and ambition to improve himself. Getha was an affectionate woman, but also high-strung and opinionated, known to enjoy an argument and a drink. She would have smothered Leonard if he had not decided, at an early age, to keep her at bay.
From his father, Cicero, came the macho and will to dominate. Cicero was quiet, uncomplaining, and plain talking. He taught Leonard by example more than by hands-on parenting.
Both parents handed down a blue-collar ethic that served him in the gym. Both were skilled chefs whose savory southern basics fueled Leonard's appetite for life.
Leonard owed much to his high-spirited brother, Roger, who was three years older, the third son, after Roy and Kenny. As an 8-year-old, Leonard followed Roger to a gym in Washington, D.C., for his first taste of boxing. Though he didn't like it, neither did he like being teased and swatted around by Roger. This became his impetus to learn self-defense. A few years later, as new residents of Palmer Park, Roger pestered the recreation center to start a boxing program, and this time Leonard found it more to his liking. Subsequently, it was Roger who sacrificed his nose - several times - to the swift merciless blows of his younger brother.
He was born Ray Charles Leonard, on May 17, 1956, in Wilmington, N.C. Getha named him for the legendary R&B musician who later would sing "America the Beautiful" before one of his biggest fights. As a child Leonard sang sweetly in a church choir, and Getha likened him to Sam Cooke, another R&B star. But Leonard dropped out of the choir when he started boxing, which was just as well. His post-pubescent voice became the butt of family jokes. "Ray went from singin' to swingin'," the Leonards would chuckle.
Cicero and Getha grew up and met in South Carolina. Cicero's father, Bidge, a sharecropper, was a towering thick-chested man, who according to family lore once knocked out a mule to win a $10 bet. Cicero boxed as a youth, inspired by his hero, heavyweight champion Joe Louis. On the farm his father rented, he set up a ring with iron spikes and plough lines and invited neighbors over to box. When he came of age, Cicero left the farm and joined the Navy. During World War II Cicero boxed for the Navy team, as a stocky 150-pounder, and claimed to have won all but one of 70 bouts.
After the war Cicero and Getha married and started their family in Wilmington, N.C., a city whose history included an infamous 1898 riot in which scores of blacks were killed and progressives - black and white - were banished by rampaging white supremacists. The riot suppressed black political participation in North Carolina and explained why the civil rights movement lagged there in the 1950s and 1960s. Cicero worked on an assembly line at a Coca-Cola bottling plant, but in 1960 he and Getha moved to Washington, D.C., in search of better jobs. Leonard was four when he left Wilmington, too young to remember much about it.
The Leonards rented an apartment at L Street and New Jersey in the District. Cicero loaded trucks in a produce market and Getha worked as a nursing assistant. The cramped apartment now included their two youngest daughters, Sandy and Sharonette, whose care often fell to the oldest daughter, Linda.
Leonard grew into a shy, quiet child who stayed out of trouble and usually spoke only if spoken to. Protected from schoolyard bullies by Roger, he expended his considerable energy playing basketball, tumbling, and running. At home he liked to curl up on the floor and read comic books. Superman was his favorite.
To Cicero and Getha, the American Dream started with home ownership and a lawn. By 1967 they had saved enough for a down payment on a house in Seat Pleasant, Md., a community east of the District. The next year they moved to Palmer Park, an unincorporated township of 9,000 mostly black working-class residents just across the District's northeast line. Their one-story ranch was small, to be sure, and the mortgage payments left little in their budget. But it had back and front yards, room enough for 12-year-old Ray to play with his dog "King," and to entertain neighbors with cartwheels and flips.
(c) Ollie Dunlap
Father Cicero Leonard, left, Sugar Ray Leonard, and mother Getha Leonard, right.
Less happy was Roger, who missed his old boxing club in the District. His love of boxing propelled him to the new Palmer Park Recreation Center virtually across the street. The county-funded center had a mission of keeping Palmer Park youth off the streets, and particularly out of nearby Landover Mall, which had become a vipers-nest of drugs, guns, and prostitution. Ever assertive, Roger asked the center's director, Ollie Dunlap, to start a boxing program.
Dunlap, 29, was just a year removed from the Washington Redskins taxi squad as a 212-pound linebacker during Vince Lombardi's single season as coach and GM. It was Lombardi's wife, Marie, who had helped him land the job as director of the community center. The son of a career military man, Dunlap's thin knowledge of boxing had come from watching the Friday night fights on TV with his father in the 1950s. Dunlap considered Roger's request.
For much of America boxing was an anachronism in 1970. Body bags returned from Vietnam, while Muhammad Ali, stripped of his heavyweight title for refusing his 1967 induction, remained a symbol of the war's divisiveness. Without Ali, boxing lacked a marquee star. The numbers of gyms, amateur clubs, and professional shows had been in decline since the 1930s. America's white middle class was indifferent to a sport dominated by black and Latino fighters, and leaned toward a view of boxing as primitive and brutal. The absence of college athletic scholarships for boxers further undercut its appeal. The NCAA had dropped boxing in 1960 after a boxer died of a brain injury suffered in the 1959 national tourney.
But the Big Picture did not deter Dunlap, who valued self-discipline and ran the recreation center with old-school authority. He knew boxing demanded the self-discipline his young clients needed, and he figured if boxing could lure a few from the mall it was worth a try. A bulletin board request for volunteer coaches brought forth three - Dave Jacobs, Janks Morton, and Joe "Pepe" Saunders, who later became known as Pepe Correa.
Among the first to sign up were Roger, of course, and Derrik Holmes, a gregarious 14-year-old who was Ray's best friend. Prodded by his brother and Holmes, Leonard signed up, too. Saunders gave him his first boxing lesson, but Jacobs quickly became his coach. A former amateur champion from the District, the 37-year-old Jacobs had boxed briefly as a pro, and now drove a delivery van for a pharmacy to support his wife and six children.
(c) Ollie Dunlap
Trainer Dave Jacobs, left, taught young Ray Leonard sound fundamentals at the Palmer Park Recreation Center.
Jacobs stressed hard work, moral fiber, and as a technical matter, balance. The latter was crucial to avoid going down on the hardwood basketball court that doubled as a boxing ring. The rec center had no money to buy an actual ring, so Dunlap laid tape on the court.
At a bony 100 pounds, Leonard looked at risk of being toppled by a strong breeze. Yet, he quickly established himself as educable, eager and determined. In the mornings, before school, he showed up for roadwork, and after school he dependably made it to the gym. A few weeks of instruction revealed his gifts to Jacob
s. He had the deluxe package: speed, power, stamina, guile, and instinct. Gradually, his success in the ring would transform his introverted personality. His shyness would melt away as he learned to talk with his gloves.
(c) Ollie Dunlap
Sugar Ray Leonard and his first trainer, Dave Jacobs.
In the next year Leonard added 25 pounds and breezed through local novice competition, earning his first mention in the Washington Post on August 10, 1971. Robert Herzog wrote that he "unveiled a devastating left hand that swelled and bloodied the eye of his opponent, Leroy Carlton. The culmination of this bloodbath came at 1:51 of the 3rd round on a left-right combination by Leonard that put Carlton on the canvas for good."
Leonard threw a left hook so violent that if it missed his momentum often would pitch him onto the canvas, according to one of his first coaches, Pepe Correa. If it connected he inquired about his opponent's health.
"He'd hit you in the chin with a left hook and he'd ask, 'are you okay?'" said Correa. "And if you said yes? You got hit with the same hook. Deep inside, you knew that he could really hurt you and really wanted to hurt you."
Soon Leonard was matched with Bobby Magruder, a 132-pounder out of the nearby Hillcrest Boys and Girls Club who was touted as the best amateur in the District area. Leonard and Magruder fought three "wars," with Leonard the victor in each. Local fans so hotly anticipated their third meeting that it was moved from Hillcrest to the larger Prince George's Community College.
(c) Ollie Dunlap
At 15, Sugar Ray Leonard boxed for Palmer Park Recreation Center. (l-r) trainer Dave Jacobs, Ray Leonard, Derrik Holmes, Brayson Mason, Roger Leonard.
Cicero now worked long hours as night manager of a supermarket just across the District line. Though Cicero initially had been skeptical of his youngest son's ring ability, he had become his biggest booster. Leonard returned the affection, sometimes showing up at the supermarket at midnight to help his father stock shelves. He would return home by 2:30 a.m., sleep for three hours, and arise for the morning roadwork demanded by Jacobs. After school Leonard would be at the gym for bag work and sparring, as well as basketball, which he loved to play. By dinner he was tired, and he routinely slumbered in the evening when he should have been doing homework. Finally, Dunlap laid down the law: rec center privileges would require a 'C' average. Those with 'B' and 'A' averages would get more time in the center's basketball games. Leonard got the message and improved his grades.
1973: The Sugar in Ray
By the spring of 1972 Leonard had the attention of amateur boxing officials as they looked ahead to the Summer Olympics at Munich. He was hard to miss. For one thing, he mimicked Muhammad Ali's signature "shuffle" - a blur-like oscillation of feet while in an elevated posture. For another, he threw Kid Gavilan's "bolo" punch - an upward punch delivered from the hip in the traditional manner that Filipinos throw a bolo knife.
The shuffle and bolo were designed for theatricality, and usually got a rise out of the crowd. They had the added effect of distracting Leonard's opponents and luring them into mistakes.
Jacobs pushed Leonard into elite competition, and though he lost in the quarterfinals of the national AAU tournament, he impressed the assistant coach of the U.S. boxing team, Sarge Johnson. It was Johnson who included Leonard on an American team that boxed against several European teams before the Olympic trials.
One day Johnson watched Leonard work out, and whispered in Jacobs' ear, "That kid of yours is sweeter than sugar." The comparison to the legendary Sugar Ray Robinson, in hand and foot speed, and in graceful and stylish movement, was high praise. Indeed, Leonard evoked Robinson, the former welterweight and middleweight champion whose heyday was the 1940s and early 1950s. The nickname stuck and Sugar Ray Leonard was born.
The birth of Sugar Ray Leonard gave shape and form to the alter ego with the seductive smile, smooth patter, and sly intent - though not for another ten years would it reach full maturity. Nearly thirty years later Leonard's ex-wife would reflect upon his slick alter ego. "If you knew Ray Leonard prior to him becoming Sugar Ray Leonard, you would see two totally different people," Juanita Leonard said. "Ray Leonard was a very quiet, meek, giving, caring individual. A peacemaker. A very loving individual - a very, very caring and giving individual. Sugar Ray Leonard, on the other hand, is probably the total opposite of that."
Leonard quickly began to explore his Sugar Ray persona. Determined to make the U.S. Olympic team, he ran up against a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. The amateur governing body required that fighters be at least 17 to qualify for the Olympics, but Leonard had only turned 16 in May. He and Jacobs came up with a plan: they would lie.
The top AAU boxing official, Rollie Schwartz, recalled meeting Leonard at an international meet against a Soviet team prior to the Olympic trials. The AAU had an age requirement of 17 for international competition.
"I looked at the choir boy face of this kid and I had a sneaking suspicion he wasn't quite that old," Schwartz said. "I asked him how old he was and he said, 'I'm seventeen, sir,' without batting an eye."
Officials allowed Leonard to compete, and in the 1st round he knocked out his Russian opponent, who was 22 or 23 and more experienced. The meet, held in Las Vegas, provided Leonard his first brush with celebrity - comic Redd Foxx, former heavyweight champion Joe Louis - and neon. He was dazzled and smitten.
After his strong showing in Las Vegas he was favored to win the Olympic trials in Cincinnati. But he lost a disputed decision in the semifinal to a local fighter, Greg Whaley. This loss should have ended Leonard's 1972 Olympic quest, except that now, as Sugar Ray, it didn't. If Leonard could dissemble about his age he could do so about his affiliation.
Under a special exemption, boxers in the military advanced automatically to the Olympic box-off. Jacobs, with the tacit approval of other amateur officials, arranged for Leonard to be a "member" of the Army team. But this ruse also failed. The night before his bout Leonard and a teammate devoured a cake. The feast pushed Leonard above 125 pounds, and in an effort to run off the excess weight he became dehydrated and ill. A physician scratched him from the tournament.
Juanita Wilkinson became Leonard's girlfriend around this time. She was a small, pretty, serious-minded 14-year-old, one of five daughters raised by a single father, Dick Wilkinson, who managed a gas station. The Wilkinsons lived five blocks from the Leonards, and from Dick Wilkinson's front porch Landover Mall was visible. In the summer and fall of 1972 Leonard and Juanita often were on the front porch when Dick Wilkinson came home from work, and he didn't know whether to be glad his daughter was not at the mall, or worried that Leonard's smile was too angelic. Juanita took to attending Leonard's workouts at the rec center, and at local tournaments she usually was in the crowd, though she found boxing distasteful.
"He was a scrawny little fellow with a really big Afro, and not an appealing (looking) person," Juanita recalled. "But there was just something about him, and he was different. He was very shy, very to himself...that was the thing that caught my eye about him, as opposed to his looks."
Characteristic of Leonard was his knack for turning defeat and adversity into motivation, a trait he may have internalized from one of his screen heroes, Bruce Lee, the martial arts icon, whose catlike moves and evasions could be seen in Leonard's ring maneuvers. After missing out on the 1972 Olympics, he found a girlfriend and shifted his focus to the next Olympics, four years distant. When Leonard ventured to Massachusetts in March of 1973 his eyes were on Montreal for the 1976 Summer Games.
Chapter 4
1973: Fathered by Adversity
Marvin Hagler carried his portable TV into the Sheraton Boston, the hotel for the New England amateur boxing team, in May 1973. Another "major," the national AAU tournament, was about to begin. His trainer, Goody Petronelli, asked him why the TV set.
"Because I plan to stay the week," Hagler said.
Indeed, both Hagler and Leonard, who was on the Washington, D.C., team, stayed the week and advanced to the fi
nals.
The Boston's Globe's Bob Ryan wrote:
Picking the Best Performer at last night's AAU Boxing Tournament at the Hynes Auditorium was about as easy as naming Frank Sinatra's greatest hit.
Was it flashy Ray Leonard, the 139-pound whiz from Washington, D.C., who evoked comparisons with Sugar Ray Robinson, Willie Pep and Muhammad Ali in punching out a dazzling decision over tough Pete Ranzany?
...Or was it local favorite Marvin Hagler, the newest Brockton belter, who flattened Philadelphian Melvin Hackett with a gorgeous right hook to move into tonight's finals?
...As awesome as the powerful victories by (Mike) Hess and Hagler were, the performance which impressed many observers most was that of Leonard, the 17-year-old machine from D.C. This kid is sophisticated enough to throw a left hook off a left jab, and he again delighted the buffs with a great boxing show.
Before the final Hagler made it known he was turning pro after the tournament - a decision he had come to only since the Golden Gloves.
The decision to turn pro, rather than wait for the '76 Olympics, as did Leonard, defined Hagler as much as any single decision. It prolonged his rise through the ranks and cost him millions in exposure and marketability. But the reasons for it were plain. Hagler was two years older than Leonard and no longer in school. Preparing for the Olympics would have pulled Hagler away from his day job in construction at a time when he needed more money, not less. He did not have the "luxury" of two working parents who owned a home, as had Leonard.
Indeed, the absence of a father is a gap in Hagler's biography that he chose to leave blank. Hagler never spoke of his father publicly, though unspoken was the presumption that no child is unscarred by parental abandonment. In Hagler the scar carved out a deeply distrustful nature.
Sorcery at Caesars: Sugar Ray's Marvelous Fight Page 3