Sugar Ray Leonard

Boxer

• Born: May 17, 1956
• Birthplace: Wilmington, North Carolina

Boxer

Although he fought professionally only forty times, Leonard established himself as one of the greatest boxers in history. His title fights produced some of the richest purses in boxing. He was never on an undercard and always was the star of the show. By his twentieth fight, he was making more than $200,000 per bout, more than any other boxer in the 1980s. He retired with 36 wins, 3 losses, and 1 draw.

Areas of achievement: Sports: boxing; Sports: Olympics

Early Life

Ray Charles Leonard was named for the famous Black singer Ray Charles. His father was a farmer but also boxed every weekend and became the first ranked amateur in military competition. Leonard was four when his family moved to Washington, DC, from North Carolina. Growing up in Washington, he was a quiet child who stayed out of trouble, sang in the church choir, and preferred to read. When he was fourteen, his older brother, an amateur boxer, goaded Leonard to come to box at the local gym. At first, he was repelled by the brutality of boxing. However, his best friend later joined the boxing gym, and Leonard chose to follow him. Within two years of his amateur debut, Leonard was being called the greatest amateur fighter of all time.

Life’s Work

When Leonard was fifteen years old, he won the National Golden Gloves competition. At the age of sixteen, he was beating international fighters ten years older than him. That year, he caught the eye of a US Olympic boxing coach, who remarked that the young fighter was “sweeter than sugar.” From that day on, Leonard was known as Sugar Ray. He attempted to qualify for the Olympics in 1972 but was one year below the age limit.

While awaiting the next Olympiad, Leonard wanted to quit boxing and go to school to study business, although he was the best amateur in the country. While his teenage friends were having fun, Leonard had to train. His hands were also frequently injured, and he disliked the pain. After 150 amateur fights, Leonard had only 5 losses. He was known for his flashy style, for taunting and smiling at his opponents.

After many years of sacrifice, Leonard won boxing gold at the 1976 Olympic Games. During the Olympics, he was sued for child support by his girlfriend, who had given birth to his son. With both his mother’s and father’s health failing, Leonard turned professional in order to earn money to support his family and child.

Leonard turned down offers of money from major promoters such as Don King, instead borrowing twenty-one thousand dollars from friends to bankroll his professional boxing career. His goal was to have complete control of his career, something no other boxer had achieved. With the legendary Angelo Dundee as his trainer, Leonard fought his first professional fight on February 5, 1977. Most people expected the stronger and more experienced Luis Vega to win. However, in his flashy, charismatic style—of which Dundee was not fond—Leonard beat Vega in all six rounds. He collected a record forty thousand dollars in his first fight and easily paid back his friends: After eighteen minutes of fighting, he was debt-free. From 1977 to 1979, Leonard had twenty-six professional fights and won them all. He won 17 of the fights by knockout. With additional income from television commercials (in which he included his son, Ray Jr.), Leonard had banked two million dollars before he ever fought for a title. In March 1980, he extended his winning streak to 28, beating Wilfredo Benitez for the World Boxing Council welterweight title. He later beat Dave Green in a title defense.

On June 20, 1980, Leonard abandoned his usual boxing technique and got into a brawling fight with Panamanian Roberto Duran. Duran won, and Leonard learned a valuable boxing lesson: He had to fight his way every time. In a rematch with Duran that November, Leonard bewildered his opponent with his trademark flair. Duran himself stopped the fight in the eighth round, and Leonard collected seven million dollars. He turned his attention to the welterweight title and defeated Thomas Hearns in Las Vegas in September 1981. For the Hearns fight, Leonard collected more than eleven million dollars. He defended the welterweight title in February 1982, then promptly retired because of an eye injury.

Several years later, Leonard was persuaded to challenge Marvin Hagler for the middleweight crown. He won the title in April 1987. He continued boxing, eventually claiming the super-middleweight title and defending it against Hearns and Duran. In 1991, in what was meant to be his last fight, he lost the middleweight belt to Terry Norris. Not wanting to end his career with a loss, Leonard made one last comeback on March 1, 1997, against Hector Camacho. Leonard, then nearly forty-one years old, lost in the fifth round.

After his boxing career ended, Leonard worked as a television commentator, product pitchman, and fight promoter. He also served as a mentor to aspiring young fighters on the television reality series The Contender. He has also been a longtime advocate for diabetes research and funding, founding the Sugar Ray Leonard Foundation with his second wife, Bernadette Robi, to support diabetes causes.

In 2011, Leonard published an autobigraphy that finally revealed the struggles that he had faced throughout his life with alcohol, drugs, and molestation. Within the pages and during interviews about the book, titled The Big Fight: My Life in and out of the Ring, Leonard revealed that he had been sexually abused by an Olympic training coach when he was just a young fighter. The book also sheds light on Leonard's admittance of alcoholism and how those he loved often felt like he was actually two different people. That same year, he appeared on the popular and long-running ABC reality competition show Dancing with the Stars; he and his partner, Anna Trebunskaya, were the third couple voted off that season. By the 2020s, he was maintaining an active routine and continuing to enter into partnerships for products that he supported, including brands like Skechers. In 2021, his story and career, along with those of Thomas Hearns, Marvin Hagler, and Roberto Durán, was the focus of a Showtime documentary series titled The Kings.

Significance

Leonard was a charismatic, flashy fighter who won titles in five different weight classes. He was the first boxer to accumulate 100 million dollars in purse money. He was adept at marketing himself and demonstrated that self-promotion could make a boxer very wealthy. Leonard was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1997.

Bibliography

Araton, Harvey. "In Book, Sugar Ray Leonard Says Coach Sexually Abused Him." New York Times. New York Times, 17 May 2011. Web. 7 Mar. 2016.

Goldstein, Alan. A Fistful of Sugar: The Sugar Ray Leonard Story. New York: Coward, 1981. Print.

Hayes, Dade. "Showtime Docuseries 'The Kings' Puts Boxers Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Durán, Marvin Hagler & Thomas 'Hitman' Hearns in Main Event." Deadline, 12 Apr. 2021, deadline.com/2021/04/showtime-boxing-docuseries-sugar-ray-leonard-marvelous-marvin-hagler-thomas-hit-man-hearns-roberto-duran-1234732616/. Accessed 22 July 2021.

Mee, Bob, and Steve Bunce. Boxing Greats: An Illustrated History of the Legends of the Ring. Philadelphia: Courage, 1998. Print.

Mullan, Harry. Boxing: The Definitive Illustrated Guide to World Boxing. Edison: Chartwell, 1996. Print.

Schulberg, Bud. Ringside: A Treasury of Boxing Reportage. Chicago: Dee, 2006. Print.