The Big Fight (5 page)

The same went for Roger, who found out the hard way that I was not the same little brother he used to push around. The day I beat Roger up for the first time was a turning point in my life and we both knew it. He began to take such a routine whipping from me, he told Dave Jacobs that our mother did not want her sons to fight each other any longer. She never said that.

Once he couldn't beat me up, Roger realized he might as well take advantage of my new skills. With gloves hanging over his shoulder, he took me to visit others in the neighborhood. “My little brother will kick your ass,” he said. I suppose you might say Roger was my first matchmaker.

This being the early seventies, when television and film still provided a lot of strong male role models, it was no surprise that I found one for myself: the martial arts star Bruce Lee. I was blown away by how much speed and power he could generate for such a small man, and how pretty he looked in the process. Lee was unbelievably intense, possessing a will to overcome any obstacle. After seeing one of his films, I went home and tried to copy his technique by driving my right fist as hard as I could into the ground in our front yard. Needless to say, I never tried
that
again. Lee inspired me for years, long after I turned pro. When I threw punches at my sparring partners, I made the same noises he did during his fierce exchanges. I wish I could have met him. He died under mysterious circumstances in 1973 at the age of thirty-two.

My love affair with boxing came as a surprise to my parents, who saw me as a sheltered child seeking to avoid confrontation at any cost. I'll never forget the puzzled look on my dad's face when I asked him to attend my first amateur bout. Fighting was fine for Roger and Kenny, but not for his youngest boy.

“You can't fight,” he said.

“Just come and watch me, Daddy,” I said.

Well, after seeing me prevail handily, he never had trouble picturing me as a fighter again. I made him quite proud, though there was, of course, another boxer who received his highest praise.

“Nobody today would beat Joe Louis,” he often said. My brothers and I shook our heads in disbelief but we didn't try to change his mind. There was no point. Besides, talking about his beloved childhood hero made him feel young again.

Within months, I started to bulk up. Speed provided a valuable advantage, but if I ever hoped to outduel the premier sluggers, I could not simply run around the ring for the whole time. As Joe Louis said about his rival Billy Conn: “He can run but he cannot hide.” Sooner or later I would have to stand toe-to-toe, giving them everything they could handle and absorbing their best in return. Only then could I be considered a real fighter.

Bobby Magruder was one, the toughest in the D.C. region, and in the spring of '71, after his scheduled opponent dropped out a day or two before their fight, I was picked to take his place.

Bobby, a white guy of Irish and Scottish descent, was a featherweight with the power of a middleweight. Even his name was intimidating—
Bobby Magrrrrrruuuder
—and considering what he went through, no wonder he was fearless.

His father deserted him and his mom when he was only ten years old. By the time he was eleven or twelve, he was fighting once a month in illegal bouts in a strip club called The Cave in Waldorf, Maryland. As Bobby duked it out against the sons of farmers and truck drivers from outside the state, girls wearing only bikinis performed on swings overhead, serving up their own form of entertainment. Bobby earned fifty cents for every victory, along with any nickels and dimes tossed on the floor by the satisfied customers. Each cent went a long way, as Bobby's financial situation made the Leonards seem like the Rockefellers. To buy a ten-cent can of soup, he rounded up five Coke bottles a day, collecting two cents per deposit.

Bobby did not fight just in the bars. He fought in the streets, and in 1966, at the age of fifteen, he was preparing for another one of those battles when he nearly lost everything. A car belonging to a member of the gang he and his buddies were about to rumble with purposely ran into him, pinning Bobby against another vehicle. Both legs were crushed, the left leg so badly that doctors were planning to amputate—until they met a Magruder who made Bobby seem meek in comparison.

“You're not taking my son's leg,” his mother insisted. “I want a specialist.”

Bobby spent more than three months in the hospital, and the leg was saved.

His recovery was only beginning. For about a year, because his family did not own a car, he walked the entire six miles back and forth every day to receive physical therapy. The walk did him enormous good, building up the strength in his body. When he felt powerful enough, he went back to the sport he loved, helping to start the Hillcrest Heights Boys Club boxing team. During those bleak moments in the hospital, he made a deal with the Lord:
Let me walk again and I will stay out of trouble.

During the late 1960s, Bobby fought in sanctioned AAU matches, knocking out everyone he faced, and made it to the 1968 Olympic Trials. It was quite a comeback.

Now it was my turn to see the legend up close. Was I concerned? You bet I was, especially after finding out that Dave Jacobs would not be in my corner because his wife was ill, leaving me in the hands of Janks Morton. I felt abandoned. Jake was my primary trainer, and nothing against Janks, but this was not the time to make such a significant change. A boxer's connection with his trainer is almost too complicated and intense for words.

Bobby was the defending Golden Gloves champion, and if that were not challenging enough, the fight was to be staged on his turf. Hillcrest Heights, or Little Italy, as it was known, was affluent, safe, and primarily white. While I do not recall any specific racist slurs, let's just say I was not greeted with the warmest reception in the world. The place was jammed, roughly 500 people squeezing into a gym fit for maybe 250, many sitting on top of one another on the windowsills, fire codes broken everywhere.

I was wrong to worry about Janks. He made me believe in myself that night as no one ever did. “We're going to do it,” he said over and over.

Janks encouraged me to box, box, box, and . . . box. One glance at the confusion on Bobby Magruder's face and I could tell he never saw anyone that fast in the ring. I danced in circles, pausing for a moment to fire a jab and then darting away from his right hand. I stayed in the middle of the ring. When he got me into the corner, I spun out of his reach. He connected with several decent shots, but I was never close to being knocked down. After I was awarded a split decision, the fans could not believe it. Their hero was not invincible, losing to, of all people, a black kid from Palmer Park!

In later years, there would be famous tussles against such legends as Duran and Hearns and Hagler, with much larger stakes, but no fight ever meant more to me than the triumph over Bobby Magruder. By defeating the man in D.C., I became the man, and if I could beat Bobby, I could beat anybody. We fought twice more, for the Golden Gloves title, and in the finals of the AAU tournament. I won both times, but it was our first duel that propelled me to the next level.

Week after week, the fights came, as did the victims, in D.C. and around the country. Some were harder than others.

One of the most memorable was an encounter with Larry Hinnant, a black fighter who was also from the D.C. region. I didn't prepare too thoroughly, as I had knocked him out before and assumed I'd have no trouble again. I soon learned never to assume
anything
in the ring. In the second round, Hinnant landed a shot out of nowhere, which almost put me on the canvas. I woke up in time to capture the decision, yet while I won over the judges, I didn't win over the spectators, who booed the verdict. I couldn't blame them. Hinnant, the underdog, fought with courage. I didn't. I was fortunate that my superior talents bailed me out.

Shortly after Hinnant came Dale Staley. Staley resembled the late actor/teen idol James Dean. Every strand of his hair was in place. When the bell rang, however, Staley turned into a savage and he made no apologies. Rules? Dale Staley did not believe in rules. He believed in using his head, elbow, knee, or any other body part to hit his opponent, and most of the time he got away with it. The fight was held at Prince George's Community College, and the gym was packed. It was like facing Bobby Magruder all over again. After my subpar showing against Hinnant, some folks figured there was a chance Staley would take me down. There was no possibility in my mind of that happening and I wasted no time proving it. I gave him a crash course in Boxing 101, connecting with one jab after another to his increasingly puffy jaw. He stayed aggressive, anxious to employ every trick he knew, but I never allowed him to get too close. The fans cheered the decision. I showed courage this time.

In 1972, as a lightweight, I made it to the quarterfinals of the National AAU Tournament. Traveling became quite an adventure, although I must admit I was very naïve back then. During my first trip on a plane, which was bound for Las Vegas, Janks Morton joked that the bottom of the aircraft was beginning to come apart. Derrik and I believed him and were scared to death. Good thing Janks didn't keep the gag going for much longer or we might have looked for the nearest parachute.

Vegas was frightening, especially at night with the lights flashing, though it didn't stop us from ignoring our curfew and walking the streets on the Strip, drinking sodas, spellbound by the strange universe we'd entered. I lost to a guy named Jerome Artis, who was superfast and talked a lot of trash, and it was, in fact, my first setback as an amateur. I wasn't too devastated. I knew I'd have to lose sometime.

The wins kept coming, along with the rewards. Despite being only sixteen, a year under the minimum age requirement, I was picked to be on the national team to oppose boxers from other countries. I lied to the people in charge, and they knew I was lying but did not care because they wanted to lead a U.S. revival in international boxing events. In Vegas, I was doing fairly well against Russia's Valery Lov, until he landed a hard right I never saw. I found myself in a place that wasn't familiar: the canvas. While I was lying there, I saw Joe Louis and the comedian Redd Foxx laughing. The Russian didn't stand a chance. Nobody laughed at me. I got up and won the fight.

Soon came the toughest test to date, the 1972 U.S. Olympic Trials in Cincinnati. At this point, capturing the gold medal was not the all-consuming goal it would become, though I was extremely disappointed when I lost a decision in the semifinals to a local kid, Greg Whaley, whom I clearly whipped. As it turned out, Whaley was hurt too severely to fight in the finals and never fought again. Did I feel sympathy for him? Not really. Everyone who signs up for this cruel sport is aware of the risks each time we climb underneath the ropes. Greg Whaley was no exception.

After the fight, Tom “Sarge” Johnson, one of the Olympic coaches, approached me in the dressing room.

“Don't worry, Sugar Man,” he said, “I'm sure you'll make the team in'76. You'll be more experienced. The lessons you take home from here will make you a much better fighter.”

Sarge had been telling people around me that I was “sweeter than sugar.” For decades, as a result of his comment, Sarge has received credit for my nickname, and I have never bothered to correct this version. I even spread it myself. It made for good copy, as they like to say.

There's just one problem. Sarge Johnson did not come up with the nickname “Sugar Ray.” I did.

I did it out of respect for the incomparable Sugar Ray Robinson, whose fights I knew almost punch by punch. Robinson, the welterweight and middleweight champion in the forties and fifties, was the most complete prizefighter in history. He could attack. He could counter. He could dance. He could do everything. Some boxing writers later took me to task, arguing that there can be only one Sugar Ray. But Robinson, in his fifties, told me he considered it an honor that I adopted his nickname, and his opinion was the one that counted.

My chance to make the 1972 Olympic team was not over just yet. It was arranged for me to join the squad representing the U.S. Army in a qualifying event in Texas, though whatever possible connection I might have had with the brave men and women who put themselves in harm's way is beyond me. My father served his country, not me.

I trained hard in Texas, too hard. I practically starved myself. For three days, I didn't consume anything but water and the juice I squeezed out of lemons. It obviously wasn't the smartest thing to do in one-hundred-degree heat. Despite my last-minute efforts, it dawned on me that, at roughly 135 pounds, I wasn't going to make weight (125 pounds) in time for my qualifying bout. Instead, I made a scene. I have never admitted this, but I faked a blackout, and, frankly, it ranks as one of my best performances—and lowest moments. I fooled everyone, including Dave Jacobs, the other coaches, and my mother, who did what I knew she'd do, pleading with the staff not to let “[her] baby fight.” I was thus spared the embarrassment of not making weight. Looking back, I wish I had been honest about the weight problem from the outset. At sixteen, there was much to learn.

Especially when it came to the opposite sex.

The person I was around girls was entirely different from who I was in the ring. In the ring, I identified with the comic book heroes I read about. My favorite was Superman, who was speedier and more powerful than any force, except kryptonite. Everyone knew my name, and that I was headed to bigger things. With girls, I could not put together a coherent sentence, let alone ask them out for a date. They knew about my boxing exploits, but that didn't impress them. Winning a bunch of amateur fights was not the same as being the star quarterback on the football team or the highest scorer on the basketball team. I wondered if there would ever be a girl for me.