The Scotsman
Interview: Sugar Ray Leonard, Boxer
04 October 2009
SO THERE they were, coming to the end of a fight they called The War, Sugar Ray Leonard in one corner, Tommy 'The Hitman' Hearns, in the other.
SO THERE they were, coming to the end of a fight they called The War, Sugar Ray Leonard in one corner, Tommy 'The Hitman' Hearns, in the other. It's the night of 16 September, 1981 at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, Nevada and we've had 12 rounds of a scheduled 15 for the undisputed middleweight championship of the world. Hearns is ahead on points. Ray needs something special now. He's sitting on his stool staring into the distance. Angelo Dundee is working on him. Telling him stuff. "Right hand, Ray. Right hand." Ray's not paying attention. His body is hurting. His left eye is closing. He's exhausted. He's got nine minutes, tops, to salvage victory and doesn't know where he's going to find the energy.
Then Dundee says something. "You're blowing it now, son. You're blowing it." Twenty eight years later, Ray can still see hear those words echoing in his head. Blowing it! "I was totally spent," he says, "but when Angelo said that, it triggered something. We all have an inner resource, a hidden thing that can make us do incredible things. It's how to activate it. Well, Angelo activated it. I got off that stool and ran to Tommy. Man, it was like two meteors colliding. He was such a great fighter, a kamikaze boxer with a huge heart. And, boy, could he punch. All the height and reach advantage, he was something else. Rounds 13 and 14 were the most important of my career. People thought I was gone. Finished. It was hot as hell in there and I could barely see out of one eye, but I hit Tommy with something like 25 straight punches and the ref stopped the fight. Even now, I can't sleep at night when I think about what happened in the ring that time."
Ray Leonard is coming to town. On Saturday night he's at Celtic Park for an An Audience With Sugar – from Roberto Duran and the 'No Mas' fight in New Orleans in 1980 (so-called because these were the words, meaning "no more", that Duran was purportedly heard to utter before he quit the bout) to the storied battle with Hearns in 1981 and on to the barbaric collision with Marvellous Marvin Hagler in 1987. Leonard won all of them. He amassed fortunes and held on to his money. He was involved in some of the most unforgettably brutal fights in history and yet, at 53, he has the same good looks he had when he 20 years younger and speaks with the same clarity. Ray is smart. Always was. Never had any truck with bloodsuckers in his entourage. Instead, he surrounded himself with family and friends, not with shysters and robbers. As you're reading this, he's in Hawaii catching some sun. "I have a good life," he says. "I've been blessed."
It'll be his first time in Scotland. He's vowing to play some golf and is asking about the weather, asking about Ken Buchanan, too. It's been a while since he saw Ken. How's he been? Where's he at? Will he come on Saturday? He sure hopes so.
They have something in common, Ray and Ken. His name is Roberto Duran. The Brawl in Montreal in June 1980: that's where these speaking engagements usually begin, as far as Ray is concerned. Duran, the bad-ass Panamanian who went by the name of Manos de Piedra (Hands of Stone) in his homeland was undefeated in eight years by the time Leonard met him in the ring for the first time in the Olympic stadium. Duran, a street urchin in his youth, saw Leonard as flash and monied, even though Ray had next to nothing himself as a kid.
"Duran was nasty, yeah. He really showed me that psychological warfare plays a major role in boxing. He was such a fierce and tenacious fighter and punched like a Mack truck. He was a warrior. That first fight, he played me. To call him crude would be an understatement. He gave me the finger, gave my wife the finger, disrespected my family. Duran was a guy who just tried to intimidate at any cost. He used every means possible to take away from you and I wanted to beat him up in Montreal. I was left emotionally devastated by that loss."
The rematch happened five months later in New Orleans. Roger Leonard, one of Ray's brothers, came up with the gameplan. "Duran's a bully, Ray," he said. "What do you do with a bully? You make him look stupid. You make a fool of him." Ray did exactly that. And Duran went mental. Ray danced and bobbed and weaved. He stuck out his chin theatrically. He wound up a big right hand like it was a windmill and then threw a left instead. "Everywhere I go in the world, people know 'No Mas'! I looked at Roberto's face in the ring and he was like, 'What the hell!' So I saw that my showmanship was affecting him, it was getting to him real bad. He was so frustrated that he threw his hands up and walked away without realising the repercussions on his legacy. Stomach cramps, he said later. No, it was just sheer frustration. By the way, he's a sweetheart nowadays. A lovely guy."
When Ray beat Hearns a year later there wasn't another fighter in the world who could touch him. He was sexy and he was loved. He was the fighter of the year, the fighter of the decade. He had everything, bar one thing. Peace of mind. The retina in his left eye became detached seven months after the Hearns epic and he announced his retirement. He was 26 years old and thought that he could leave boxing behind him.
He gave it up for two years, but couldn't leave it alone. Once the eye healed he made a winning but unconvincing comeback against Kevin Howard in 1984. Howard, a journeyman from Philly, dumped Ray on his ass at one point. It shocked him. Duran and Hearns had never managed to put him down. Ray quit again, saying he just didn't have it any more.
Nobody knew it at the time but his personal life became troubled when he departed the ring. "It was really difficult for me. Very trying. I tried to do the best I could and it wasn't good enough. I drifted away, I got involved in drinking and drugs. Money was not an issue any more for me. All that was an issue was me being happy and people tell you how to be happy. They say, if you drink enough tequila you'll be happy, if you do a lot of drugs you'll be happy. My family life suffered. The thing was that Marvin Hagler was on the scene and he was The Man and I felt a great void in my career not having fought Hagler and I tried to fill that void with drink and drugs. Thank God, I woke up one day. I was a lucky man to come out of that. I could easily have been swallowed up like everybody else."
Hagler haunted Ray. He thought about him day and night. Couldn't get him out of his head. After three years of beating Hagler in his dreams he wanted to make it a reality. He told his family that he was coming out of retirement to fight Hagler. "To fight who?" said his stunned brother, Roger. "You've had two fights in six years, Ray. And neither of them were much good. You're going in with a guy who hasn't lost in 11 years! You crazy?"
Marvellous Marvin was a bull. "A man with a head so fierce that hair is afraid to grow there," as one writer put it at the time. Hagler predicted such a beating for Leonard that his opponent might not be able to talk, walk or see after the fight. "I like to mess up pretty faces, " he said. "If I was me, I wouldn't want to fight me!"
Ray never minded being the underdog. "I was the underdog in nearly all of those big fights. People said Duran would wipe me out in the rematch. In fact, my own trainer quit when I took the fight. He didn't think I couldn't win it. And nobody gave me a chance against Tommy Hearns either. Against Hagler, I was the total long-shot. You know, when Hagler got into the ring he had just one purpose and that was to destroy you. He wanted to kill you. He'd have probably sent you flowers, but he wanted to take your head off. But I truly believed I could beat him. In the dressing room, the fighter knows whether it's going to be a long night or a good night. I knew it was going to be a good night. I just felt it. Fighters will tell you that. They know deep inside themselves whether they're going to win or not."
Leonard won on points after a battle of gruesome intensity. He should have walked away then, but didn't. Couldn't. He fought five more times in a span of ten years. "I'm never going to figure out why I carried on as long as I did. But I don't regret it. I don't like that I did it, but regret is a harsh word. I shouldn't have been in there for the last two. I shouldn't have been in there with Terry Norris (Leonard lost on points in 1991] and shouldn't have been in there with Hector Camacho (the referee stopped the fight in the fifth in 1997], but that was the way it was and I can't change it.
"I made mistakes, but I'm luckier than most. I've got a successful business, lots of fans who think a lot of me and a family who loves me. My oldest kid is 35 and my youngest is eight. I enjoy the school run and being a dad. Boxing will always be with me. I like that. I do television, I write, I'm making a boxing film right now and I do speeches like the one coming up in Glasgow. It's a nice life. But, let me tell you, there isn't a day that goes by when I don't thank God. I'm one of the lucky ones."
An Audience with Sugar Ray Leonard, Saturday, 10 October 10, Celtic Park.
Tickets at mareepromotions.co.uk or direct from Kevin Maree on 078999 53543.
SUGAR'S BIG FIGHT NIGHTS
1 AGAINST ROBERTO DURAN, 20 JUNE, 1980
In a fight that became known as the "Brawl in Montreal", Duran resented only getting one-fifth of the money Leonard would receive, making no secret of it in the pre-match press conferences. Despite this he overcame the young champion by a unanimous decision over 15 rounds, becoming WBC Welterweight champion.
The glory was short-lived, however, as in the November re-match Duran bizarrely quit in round eight, apparently saying "no más" (no more). Some pundits put this down to Leonard's ability to taunt and frustrate his opponent, others claim Duran simply had no desire to fight an opponent he apparently labelled a "clown" mid-fight. His reasons for quitting continue to be a mystery to this day.
2 AGAINST THOMAS HEARNS, 16 SEPTEMBER, 1981
Amongst the glitz and glamour of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Leonard went into this fight as underdog. Thomas "The Hitman" Hearns, with 30 knock-outs and no losses in 32 fights, was seen by most as unbeatable. In a fight where the balance of power swung equally, the early rounds going to Hearns, the middle to Leonard, it was the final few that proved decisive. Urged on by his coach, Angelo Dundee, who told his fighter he was "blowing it" after round 12, Leonard emerged from his corner a man refreshed. Throwing a barrage of well executed punches to which Hearns had no response, Leonard took firm control, forcing the referee to stop the fight in round 14. Leonard was crowned the undisputed welterweight champion of the world.
3 AGAINST MARVIN HAGLER, 6 APRIL, 1987
Coming out of retirement for the second time, Leonard underwent an intense training regime (including full 12-round fights behind closed doors) to get in shape for the bout with Hagler (his first fight at middleweight). Leonard's previous eye injuries and relative inactivity before announcing the fight concerned those close to him. Branded the "Superfight" complete with a 20-foot ring and 12-round limit, Leonard emerged victorious thanks to a controversial split decision. While there was no disputing Hagler had landed the heavier punches, it was the quicker and flashier fleet-footed style of Leonard that swung the fight in his favour. The result remains a source of controversy. |
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