Sorcery at Caesars: Sugar Ray's Marvelous Fight

by Steve Marantz

  It was revolutionary for boxing, a big new idea that undercut decades of custom and practice. Boxers always had worked for managers, trainers, and promoters. Managers and trainers usually took a combined 33 percent of the boxer's earnings, if not more, while promoters claimed all or most of the profit above the boxer's fixed fee.

  Trainer's idea was that Leonard would hire a manager and trainer at fixed salaries far less than the customary rate. He would act as his own promoter and contract out the operational and marketing functions at a fixed fee. Under this system, profit belonged to Leonard.

  Free agency resonated with Leonard, too. Shortly after the Olympics he had visited Yankee Stadium and had been cornered by promoter Don King in a restroom. King, a former numbers racketeer who had stomped a man to death on a Cleveland sidewalk, and served four years in an Ohio prison before becoming a promoter, tried to recruit Leonard. But Leonard scurried away feeling as though he needed to shower. The other major promoter, Bob Arum, held no more appeal, nor did any of the second-tier promoters, but it was more than that. Leonard's alter ego, Sugar Ray, was a free lancer by inclination. Sugar Ray needed room to maneuver, and he needed to be his own boss.

  Leonard announced his decision publicly on October 12, 1976. Twenty-four local investors created a pool of $21,000 to finance his start-up. Trainer called the group "a community-oriented investment organization" that would take only a small percentage of Leonard's earnings and eventually enable him to stand on his own feet.

  "I'm doing it for my parents," Leonard said. "They're kind of down now and I'm capable of lifting them back up. I want to put them in a good financial position.

  "It won't be like I'm a piece of property with someone saying, 'OK, you fight there, there and there.'"

  The rest of the team fell quickly into place. Charlie Brotman, a cheerful public relations veteran, was brought in to organize Leonard's appearances and media requests. Brotman had worked for the old Washington Senators before they departed the capital in 1961, and subsequently for failed pro basketball and soccer franchises.

  Brotman was asked to recruit a manager who could navigate Leonard to a championship - someone to select opponents and parse the arcane politics of the sanctioning bodies. He zeroed in on three veterans - Eddie Futch, Gil Clancy, and Angelo Dundee - with sterling credentials. Dundee, 55, ultimately was chosen because he was willing to let Leonard train with Jacobs in Palmer Park. Dundee, of course, was Ali's corner man, and had worked with eight other champions. His hiring gave Leonard even more credibility.

  (c) Ollie Dunlap

  Trainer Angelo Dundee (left), Leonard, trainer Janks Morton (right), and publicist Charlie Brotman (kneeling).

  Trainer's strategy was to maximize rewards and minimize risk. Dundee was under strict orders not to over-match Leonard. Meanwhile, Trainer prospected for the best offers from TV networks and grassroots promoters.

  Leonard's first pro bout, on Feb. 5, 1977, televised by CBS, was held at the Baltimore Civic Center. Though pro boxing had been dormant in Baltimore for 20 years, city officials recruited the bout and pledged money, so certain were they of Leonard's appeal. The fight was advertised on billboards, posters, and the backs of buses. Leonard even sent a telegram to President Jimmy Carter, in office for less than a month, and asked him to attend. "If you are unable to attend please tune in CBS television," the telegram read.

  The night before the fight Leonard took Juanita and Ray, Jr., to the film Rocky, which would soon win the Oscar for Best Picture of 1976.

  Dundee found an opponent who evoked the fictional "Rocky" - Luis "The Bull" Vega, a squarely built Puerto Rican expatriate. Leonard, at 140 pounds, drubbed the hapless Vega but could not drop him en route to a six-round decision. The event drew 10,270, and the live gate, along with $10,000 in TV fees, pushed Leonard's take to $40,000. Vega was paid $650.

  Leonard paid off his original investors each with $40 interest, and became the sole owner of Sugar Ray Leonard, Inc. He was able to rent an apartment for himself, Ray, Jr., and Juanita, who was enrolled at a local community college. Leonard turned 21. He had been a man for several years, and now he could pay his bills like one.

  In his rise to the top, Leonard chose marketability over credibility. In 1978 he notched six knockouts in 11 bouts, and fought in outposts such as Dayton, New Haven, Utica, Providence, Portland, Me., and Springfield, Mass., usually before crowds of 5,000 or more. In April 1978 he fought at the Capital Centre in Landover, Md., and drew 15,272, the largest indoor boxing crowd ever in Maryland.

  Meanwhile, Trainer played the networks against one another and cut lucrative new deals with ABC and HBO. In January 1979 Leonard broke his own attendance record, drawing 19,743 to the Capital Centre for his bout with Johnny Gant of Washington. The bout was billed as a local turf war, though Leonard had little trouble en route to an 8th-round TKO. Indeed, Gant, a respectable journeyman and a ranked welterweight, was only a tad better than most of Leonard's opponents during his build-up period.

  In guiding Leonard to the top, Dundee had rather easily fulfilled his mission to find pliable opponents. Only once did Dundee stumble. Marcos Geraldo, a Mexican middleweight (160 pounds), hurt Leonard in the early going and extended him the 10-round distance. Trainer was furious at Dundee after Geraldo nearly derailed Sugar Ray Leonard, Inc.

  But Leonard had yet to be tested by a championship-quality opponent. Some perceived him as a TV creation. He had fought 12 times on ABC, three times on HBO, twice on CBS, and once on NBC, and had appeared as an analyst on CBS and ABC boxing shows. Cameras loved him, but he needed a world title for validation, not to mention leverage for future bonanzas.

  On his way up Leonard neatly sidestepped the two best fighters in his division - Roberto Duran and Thomas Hearns. He also avoided a skillful veteran, Carlos Palomino, who had lost the WBC title to Benitez in January 1979.

  Pipino Cuevas, a hard-hitting Mexican knockout artist, held the WBA title. Either title would do, but Leonard chose the safer opponent, Benitez, a deft boxer who possessed little of Cuevas' punching power, or for that matter, Leonard's.

  Benitez had won a 140-pound title at age 17 before he won his welterweight title. The 21-year-old Puerto Rican had a 37-0-1 record when he signed to fight Leonard.

  On the eve of the fight Leonard received a call from Ali.

  "None of our stuff," Ali said.

  No hot-dogging, he meant. Scoring judges would take a dim view of such antics against a world champion.

  Forewarned, Leonard was all business in a tense tactical match between mirror-image boxers who, oddly enough, fought flat-footed. Leonard floored Benitez in the 3rd, amassed a lead in the middle rounds, and staggered Benitez in the 11th. Benitez mounted a comeback in the 12th, 13th and 14th rounds, but made the mistake of taunting Leonard with a grin at the onset of the 15th. The final round was a slugfest, until Leonard gained the upper hand in the final 30 seconds, dropped Benitez, and forced a stoppage with six seconds remaining.

  Afterward, Leonard reminded the press, "People said I was just a Hollywood actor."

  He returned to Maryland and, tit-for-tat, declined a White House invitation from Jimmy Carter, who had declined an invitation to his first pro bout.

  No longer a "Hollywood actor," but a world champion, with earnings of $4 million, Leonard decided to marry Juanita. Theirs would not be a Hollywood wedding, although it was preceded by a tinseltown trope: a prenuptial agreement.

  The wedding, on January 19, 1980, took place at the First Baptist Church of Highland Park in Landover, Md., with six-year-old Ray Jr., as ring-bearer. The standing-room-only crowd included a Washington Post society reporter, who wrote that Leonard "looked dazed but remained on his feet" as he left the altar.

  They honeymooned in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Then they returned to oversee construction of a new home on eight acres in suburban Potomac, Md. It included a sauna, basketball and tennis courts, basement gym, swimming pool, and five bedrooms. Juanita drove a new Fiat convertible while Leonard tooled
around in a new black Mercedes sedan.

  Life was good. Leonard was at the top of the Fight Game, confident, secure, infinitely clever, and yet, unbeknownst to him, vulnerable. He was about to enter a subtler realm of boxing.

  Chapter 6

  1980: Duran

  A crowded Montreal sidewalk was the stage for a remarkable pas de deux on an afternoon in June 1980. Two groups of pedestrians converged. One was Ray Leonard, his wife, and entourage. The other included a man whose fierce visage, it would be written, "reminded some of Che Guevara, others of Charles Manson."

  Juanita Leonard was startled to find Roberto Duran's flat impenetrable black eyes locked on hers. Was he looking at her? He was.

  "I keel your husband," Duran snarled.

  To make sure she heard he repeated himself.

  "I keel your husband."

  In the next instant Duran and his group moved on. Juanita was stricken. Leonard's jaw was on his chest. Then his blood began to rise. Duran had besmirched his honor.

  "This went on for four or five days - you could see Ray losing his composure," recalled Ollie Dunlap. "This was the first time Ray had the Fight Game put on him. Duran worked him."

  Leonard fought Duran on June 20, 1980, lost a close but unanimous decision, and earned his graduate degree in pugilism.

  Duran was a picaresque character, one that a novelist or screenwriter might have invented. By 1980 his career was in its second act, in his late prime, at the age of 29.

  Raised by a single mother in Panama City's poorest slum, Duran had known a depth of poverty beyond Hagler or Leonard's imagination. His was banana republic poverty, with tropical heat and mosquitoes and the persistent ache of an empty stomach.

  The facts of Duran's early years, blurred by his own embellishment, survive as semi-myth. At 12 Duran shined shoes, varnished furniture, hawked the daily newspaper, sang and danced in saloons for loose change, and foraged for food. One day he followed his older brother to a local gym and took up boxing.

  Soon he became a street brawler, and was expelled from third grade, at 13, for pushing another student down a stairwell. He knocked out five men in their 20s who eyed his girl at a dance, and was jailed overnight with his victims - one of whom was out cold until the morning.

  Yet another story - Duran's favorite - placed him at a country fair. He tried to impress a girl but had no money to buy whiskey. A fellow challenged Duran to a wager - $2 and two bottles of whiskey - if he could knock out a nearby horse. Duran planted a hard one behind the horse's ear, it toppled, and he won the bet. But the punch ripped his hand open to the bone. He deferred medical attention to stay with the girl, but alas, he did not get a single kiss.

  All of these incidents made Duran a local character, but they did not put food in his belly. By now he was one of Panama's best amateur boxers, and one of its dirtiest. He liked to hit low, butt, thumb, and knee. When amateur officials left him off an international team, for fear of an incident, he turned pro. At 16, in the rat-infested port of Colon, he won a four-round decision over Carlos Mendoza, and was paid $25.

  Duran debuted in New York on Sept. 13, 1971, on the undercard of a lightweight title bout, and knocked out Benny Huertas in the 1st round. "Duran hardly worked up a sweat," wrote Vic Ziegel of the New York Post. "A good thing, too, because he didn't bother to shower." Duran hated the line, and remembered it when Ziegel came to interview him in 1980.

  By June 1972 he was ready for lightweight champion Ken Buchanan. In promoting the bout, Madison Square Garden played up Duran's background as a Panama City street fighter. Duran embellished the role, spewed Spanish invective at Buchanan at the weigh-in, and predicted a 9th-round knockout.

  Duran dominated Buchanan and stopped him in the 13th round. The bout ended in controversy as a downed Buchanan writhed and twitched involuntarily, after a low blow and a knee to the groin.

  Over the next six years Duran defended his title 12 times and became a virtual folk hero in Panama, known as "Manos de Piedra" (Hands of Stone), celebrated as the best "pound-for-pound" fighter in the world. He paid no taxes, had a military jeep at his disposal, and was a friend of Panamanian strong man Gen. Omar Torrijos. He kept six cars in his driveway and a 680-pound pet lion in his backyard. He was married, and a father, and supported his mother and untold family members. When he was not home, frequently, his diversions were women, food and drink.

  "Women and the glass - those are my only two drugs," Duran told reporters, though he might have included, "fork and knife."

  By 1978 Duran had eaten himself out of the 135-pound division and could see a virtual feast, Leonard, rising at 147 pounds. It made perfect sense to become a 147-pounder - he could eat more and earn more. In June 1979 Duran manhandled former welterweight champion, Carlos Palomino, and waited for Leonard's dethroning of Benitez.

  The Leonard-Duran bout was arranged early in 1980 after a tense negotiation that included the commander of the Panamanian National Guard interceding on Duran's behalf. Trainer controlled the process, chose Montreal's Olympic Stadium as the site, and installed both Arum and King as co-promoters. Leonard's purse was approximately $10 million, largely due to closed-circuit TV revenue, much of it from Duran's Latino fans. Duran's purse was $1.5 million, ten times more than he ever had made, but puny in comparison.

  Once the fighters arrived in Montreal, the tables turned. Duran controlled the process, in a way Leonard had not experienced or imagined. In every sense of the Fight Game, Leonard had met his match.

  First, Duran captured the locals. Les Quebecois were drawn to his warmth, flamboyance, and Spanish language. Any language was preferable to English after a Quebec-wide vote to secede from the Canadian federation had lost decisively less than a month before.

  Large midday crowds attended Duran's workouts at a downtown shopping mall. Duran blew kisses and pressed flesh, and picked up shreds of French and tossed them at fans in a comical helium-injected voice: "Oui Oui monsieur" and "Parlez-vous Francais?" When a fan shouted "Leonardo Leonardo!" he broke into an impromptu pantomime and flew around the ring like a chicken.

  Les Quebecois were cool to Leonard, the incorporated fighter who drove prices for mid-range seats - from $75 to $300 - nearly out of reach. He was surprised because he had won his gold medal in Montreal in 1976. The city had embraced Leonard and his family as one of the Game's feel-good stories. But now Duran's workouts drew larger crowds and local media doted on him. Leonard was unsettled. Public rejection and indifference were new to his psyche.

  Leonard speculated that he had become an object of envy.

  "These people don't really hate me," he said. "They just don't want to see me succeed. I guess for some there has to be a flaw, something wrong, something negative."

  Meanwhile, Duran's weight was under control, not always a given. He walked the Montreal streets with bodyguards whose job was to keep him out of the pastry shops and bistros - and in the path of Leonard and Juanita.

  Three days before the bout Duran was summoned to a hospital due to an irregular EKG reading on a heart test. For half a day, until a new test came back negative, Leonard worried about a cancellation and the loss of $10 million. He wondered if Duran had manipulated the scare.

  Later that same day Leonard met with Charlie Brotman, his publicity director. Brotman had a list of canned questions for the media horde and wanted Leonard's answers. Brotman's first question was, "How are you going to fight Duran?"

  "Flat-footed," Leonard replied.

  Brotman blanched. "What?"

  "I'm going to beat Duran at his own game," Leonard said. "I'm faster than he is, I can hit as hard as he does, I can take a punch as well as he can. That's the way I'm going to fight."

  The notion had taken hold, against conventional wisdom, common sense, and Sweet Science. The bout was predicated on contrasting styles: Duran was supposed to brawl, Leonard was supposed to box. By "sticking and moving," Leonard could exploit his speed and reach advantage. Except that now he wanted to brawl.

  A ceremon
ial weigh-in was held at the shopping mall a day before the bout. Juanita saw a woman gesture at her.

  "Who's giving me the finger?" Juanita asked

  Duran's wife, Felicidad, she was told.

  "Real nice," said Juanita. "I'll just smile back."

  Now Leonard was to fight a guy with a bad heart whose wife gave his wife the finger.

  In boxing usually the legs go first, then the body and head. But in Leonard's case it was his judgment.

  The first meaningful punch, thrown by Duran 30 seconds into the bout, caught Leonard on his protective cup. Welcome to my world, Duran seemed to say. Welcome to the fetid, putrid, remorseless Panamanian slum I come from, pretty boy.

  Fifteen rounds later, at the final bell, Leonard extended his glove toward his tormentor. Tap it, you little devil, Leonard seemed to say. You mangled my face and mauled my ribs but you didn't break me. Tap my glove - this is what civilized people do.

  Their bout virtually started with a low blow and ended with Duran slapping away Leonard's glove outstretched in sportsmanship. In between were 15 rounds of boxing and brawling at a pace rarely seen in the ring. So intense was the action, and so subtle the skills of Duran and Leonard that scoring was difficult for the three European judges, and description elusive for media.

  It was not a bout of specific blows. Rather, it was a cartoon blur of fists, feet, elbows and knees, pell-mell, back and forth, purposeful, iron-willed, relentless and clever. Ultimately, Leonard's tactics played into Duran's strengths, and Duran won a close but unanimous 15-round decision.

  Afterward, HBO commentator Ferdie Pacheco, who spoke Spanish, stuck a microphone in Duran's face and asked him how he had won. Duran fairly screamed his answer.

  "He says he knew he would win," Pacheco translated. "He is more of a man. He is more strong."

  1980: Hagler in London

  Marvin Hagler dropped to his knees in exultation and gratitude. The next instant projectiles of plastic bottles and beer cans sizzled past his shaved head. Before Hagler could react, a human shield - Goody and Pat Petronelli, attorney Steven Wainwright, and brother Robbie Sims - formed above him. Soon London police escorted the new middleweight champion from the ring to a secured room.