FIGHT NIGHTS, Sugar Ray Leonard would spend time in front of a mirror. He'd look into his eyes, the windows to his soul. He wanted to see them clear and focused. He wanted to see sparks reflecting the fire in his belly. He wanted to see the fury he'd need to knock the other guy's head off his shoulders.
Sugar Ray Leonard has been gone for some time now, filed in some shadow box along with the Olympic gold medal, the neon smile, the photo of his girlfriend he taped to one sock, the fawning interviews with Howard Cosell, the retirements and the comebacks, the dramatic fights with Tommy Hearns and Marvin Hagler and Roberto Duran. No mas!
Ray Leonard lives on. And now, he has decided to take one long, hard look into the mirror to help us understand why he turned to drugs and alcohol and how he patched the broken pieces of his life together.
He has written a book with Michael Arkush called, "The Big Fight: My Life in and out of the Ring," and it is a stark look inside the mind of a fighter, how he prepares, how he schemes and dreams, how he attempts to win the fight before the fight.
America got its first look at Leonard in 1976, when he was part of an Olympic boxing squad that won more gold medals than all the U.S. track and field athletes.
He had that glittering smile, he had that photo of Juanita, his high school girlfriend, taped to his sock, he had charisma, he had swift if brittle hands.
He also had a secret. He had been sexually molested by an Olympic assistant coach. He doesn't name the culprit in the book, even though the man is dead. And then, an older man, on the fringes of the sport, behaved inappropriately.
Leonard believes that those two chilling episodes were the catalysts for the bad behavior that followed, the womanizing that humiliated Juanita, the estrangement from Ray Jr. (despite those cuddly 7UP commercials they did together).
Leonard wants the reader to believe he was self-medicating when he turned to booze and drugs, trying to muffle the pain he felt, the anger he could not share, the depression that glazed every look into the mirror.
He shares the memories of a dysfunctional family, a painful childhood. His father drank too much belligerent whiskey. His mother could turn violent, and there's a frightening scene of his father staggering out of their home, begging a neighbor to remove a knife from his back after one more domestic dispute.
He won the gold medal and waited eagerly for the endorsement money to jangle his way. Instead, he got hit with a paternity suit, part of a crackdown on welfare cheaters. Juanita had applied for public assistance, and the bureaucrats in Prince George's County, Md., wanted to know whether the father of her child could provide financial support.
Leonard already had told the world that he would not turn pro, that he intended to go to college. The paternity suit soured prospective sponsors. His parents were ill; he needed money to support Juanita and Ray Jr.
Promoter Don King had been hovering. He invited Leonard to attend the Muhammad Ali-Ken Norton fight at Yankee Stadium. Somehow, he wound up in Ali's dressing room before the fight.
Ali told him: "If you do turn pro, just make sure that you don't do what I did. Don't let anyone own you." Ali also advised him to hire his trainer, Angelo Dundee, saying, "He has the right complexion and the right connections."
That was one of Ali's favorite lines, describing someone as having the complexion for the connection. Leonard turned pro and found a solid guy to manage his career, an attorney named Mike Trainer.
He hired Dundee, but he demeans Angelo's role in the book. He has some harsh words for others in his entourage, too greedy, disloyal.
There are some fascinating revelations about the fight with Duran, some awkward justification for retiring and unretiring, some brutal scenes of addiction.
His marriage shattered on the jagged rocks of infidelity. He has found tranquillity with a second wife, Bernadette. They have two children, Camille and Daniel. He looks in the mirror now and likes what he sees. *
Send email to stanrhoch@verizon.net .
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