Sugar Ray Robinson

Boxer

• Born: May 3, 1921
• Birthplace: Ailey, Georgia
• Died: April 12, 1989
• Place of death: Culver City, California

Sport: Boxing

Early Life

On May 3, 1921, Sugar Ray Robinson was born Walker Smith, Jr., to Walker and Marie Smith. When, as a fifteen-year-old flyweight, he needed an Amateur Athletic Union card to qualify for his first match, Walker, Jr., used the card of a retired amateur boxer. From then on, he fought under the name on that card, Ray Robinson. Later, after a sportswriter called him “Sugar Ray,” he adopted that as his legal name.

Young Walker frequently visited Detroit’s Brewster Center Gymnasium to watch the workouts of Joe Barrow, another amateur, later known as Joe Louis. Louis and Robinson remained lifelong friends. In 1932, Walker moved to New York City with his mother and two sisters. Walker helped out by doing odd jobs, including dancing on sidewalks and selling Harlem River driftwood. He left DeWitt Clinton High after only three years, changed his name, and became a boxer.

The Road to Excellence

His manager, then and throughout his career, was George Gainford. By 1940, Ray Robinson had won all eighty-five of his amateur bouts and earned the Golden Gloves featherweight (1939) and lightweight(1940) titles. It seemed that he could not be beaten. Ray’s amateur experience gave him a confident, even cocky, attitude. These amateur bouts were a sensible, gradual preparation for his first professional fight in October, 1940, at the age of nineteen. In that debut, Ray knocked out Joe Eschevarria in two rounds at Madison Square Garden.

Sugar Ray later told how, on that October night, watching tough Fritzie Zivic defeat Henry Armstrong, he vowed to avenge his onetime idol. He fulfilled this promise, first by a decision and, in 1942, by a tenth-round knockout.

The Emerging Champion

Sugar Ray won his first forty fights, thirty-two by knockout. His record was 123-1 from 1940 through 1951. His only loss came in 1943, by a decision to a heavier Jake LaMotta.

World War II affected the lives of all Americans, including Sugar Ray’s. He was drafted into the Army in March of 1943. After basic training, he was promoted to sergeant and assigned to Joe Louis’s boxing group. He spent his two-year tour of duty giving boxing exhibitions at military bases and hospitals.

Sugar Ray married Edna Mae Holly in 1943. The marriage was his second and produced a son, Ray, Jr. In 1965, he married his third wife, Millie.

During his prime, Sugar Ray may have been the greatest boxer of all time. Veteran ring broadcaster Don Dunphy rates him in the top four, with Rocky Marciano, Joe Louis, and Muhammad Ali. Sugar Ray was extremely fast, with great timing and balance, which enabled him to throw every type of punch known to boxing with optimum leverage. In addition, Sugar Ray was a serious student of the science of boxing.

Upon the retirement of welterweight champion Marty Servo, Sugar Ray won that title in a fifteen-round decision over Tommy Bell at Madison Square Garden in December, 1946. Sugar Ray defended his title five times in four years. In 1947, a victory over Jimmy Doyle in Cleveland proved extremely unfortunate: Doyle died the next day. Sugar Ray contributed $4,000 of his $5,000 purse to Doyle’s family.

Among Sugar Ray’s other unsuccessful challengers were Kid Gavilan (1949) and Charley Fusari (1950). Sugar Ray contributed his entire purse from this last fight to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund. Over the years, Sugar Ray frequently donated his winnings to worthy causes. In 1950, he was awarded the Edward J. Neil Trophy, for the year’s outstanding boxer, by the New York Boxing Writers Association.

In December, 1950, Sugar Ray toured Europe as a middleweight, winning five bouts in five weeks, four of them against European champions or former champions. Sugar Ray became Europe’s boxing idol after this incredible achievement.

Back in the United States, Sugar Ray challenged Jake LaMotta for his middleweight crown on February 14, 1951. Sugar Ray had won three of their four previous bouts; LaMotta was the only man who had bested Sugar Ray in the ring. Weighing in at 155 pounds, Sugar Ray captured the championship from a bloodied but still standing LaMotta in the thirteenth round.

Continuing the Story

Thirty years old and entering a heavier boxing class, Sugar Ray moved into troubles in the ring. In July, 1951, he lost his crown to English boxer Randy Turpin on points—only his second loss. He regained the championship in September. Bleeding from a head butt in the tenth round, Sugar Ray launched a furious attack to win by a technical knockout.

In April, 1952, Ray won a savage match over Rocky Graziano. In June of that year, his bid for Joey Maxim’s light heavyweight title ended in a bizarre “knockout,” the only one of Ray’s career. The 104-degree heat had forced referee Ruby Goldstein to retire in the tenth round. Insurmountably ahead on points, with Maxim merely covering up and holding, Sugar Ray collapsed in his corner after the thirteenth round.

Sugar Ray retired after the Maxim fight to try his hand as a song-and-dance nightclub act. He returned to the ring in 1955, regaining the middleweight title by defeating Bobo Olson. In 1957, he lost the title to Gene Fullmer, again regained it, and lost it to Carmen Basilio, then took it back the next year. The Basilio bouts, both fifteen-round split decisions, were among Sugar Ray’s toughest. By the time of his final retirement in 1965, Sugar Ray’s record stood at 175 wins, 110 knockouts, and six draws. Most of his nineteen losses came while he was in his forties.

Throughout his career, Sugar Ray was a generous philanthropist. He gave tens of thousands of dollars to veterans’ organizations, cancer and infantile paralysis research, the B’nai B’rith, and needy friends. He was the founder of the Sugar Ray Youth Foundation. Sugar Ray died on April 12, 1989, in Culver City, California.

Summary

Sugar Ray Robinson was welterweight champion from 1946 to 1951. He relinquished that title because he moved up to the middleweight division, whose crown he won five times between 1951 and 1960. In 1967, he was inducted into the Ring magazine Boxing Hall of Fame. After retiring, he devoted his life to helping children through his Los Angeles-based youth foundation, which continued to flourish under the care of his wife, Millie, after he died in 1989.

Bibliography

Blewett, Bert. The A-Z of World Boxing: An Authoritative and Entertaining Compendium of the Fight Game from Its Origins to the Present Day. Rev. ed. Parkwest, N.Y.: Robson Books, 2002.

Boyd, Herb, and Ray Robinson. Pound for Pound: A Biography of Sugar Ray Robinson. New York: Amistad, 2006.

Heller, Peter. In This Corner … ! Forty World Champions Tell Their Stories. 2d ed. New York: Da Capo Press, 1994.

Robinson, Sugar Ray, and Dave Anderson. Sugar Ray: The Sugar Ray Robinson Story. London: Robson, 1992.

Schiffman, Sheldon M. Sugar Ray Robinson: Beyond the Boxer. Nashville, Tenn.: Express Media, 2004.

Shropshire, Kenneth L. Being Sugar Ray: The Life of Sugar Ray Robinson, America’s Greatest Boxer and First Celebrity Athlete. New York: BasicCivitas, 2007.

Sugar, Bert Randolph. Boxing’s Greatest Fighters. Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 2006.