The Big Fight

Angelo Dundee came aboard in November, agreeing to a deal for 15 percent of my earnings. A few weeks later, I left D.C. to train at his base, the historic 5th Street Gym in Miami Beach. I was in awe. I could not believe I would be working out in the same ring where Ali hung out all those years. I had heard of the place for so long I almost expected gold locker rooms and new, shiny equipment. Instead, the gym was the same as any other, except for one difference. I could smell its greatness.

Angelo observed as I went through a standard workout, hitting the bags, jumping rope, and doing a little sparring. He offered a few pointers afterward but was generally pleased with my technique.

“We’re not going to change nothing in his style,” Angelo had told the reporters in D.C. “We’re just going to add a few touches. The Sugar Ray Leonard who was good enough for the Olympics is good enough for the pros.”

Angelo estimated it would take about three years before I’d earn a shot at the title. With each of his fighters, he selected opponents to challenge them, but not too severely or too quickly. If that meant a delay in vying for the crown, so be it. Ali didn’t take on Liston until his twentieth fight, more than three years after he turned pro. A loss to any combatant at an early stage in his career could derail a young promising boxer for years to come, and perhaps cause irrevocable damage to his fragile psyche.

The man chosen for my pro debut was Luis “the Bull” Vega from Ponce, Puerto Rico. At five feet seven and 141 pounds, Vega, to be blunt, appeared to be no bull. A loser in eleven of his prior twenty-five matches, he would not pose a serious threat, which was just what we aimed for on opening night. The scheduled six-round duel was slated for February 5, 1977, at the Baltimore Civic Center, which put together a more attractive offer than Abe Pollin and the Capital Centre group.

I was thrilled to launch my new life in Baltimore. Roughly forty miles from Palmer Park, Baltimore was close enough for my fans and family to attend, including Pops, who, sitting in a wheelchair near ringside, was given a one-day pass from Leland Memorial Hospital in Riverdale. He was so excited he almost passed out.

At first, the doctors told him he was too sick to travel. Being Cicero Leonard, he did not back down. His long-term prognosis was excellent, thank God, and due to the money I would be making, he and Momma would not have to worry any longer about their bills. On the subject of money, the credit went to Mike Trainer. It was obvious from my first fight that the risk I assumed by hooking up with someone outside the close-knit boxing fraternity would pay large dividends. I stood to earn, depending on the size of the gate, as much as forty thousand dollars, an unprecedented sum for a pro debut. And I thought I was rich when I signed the autographs at the car show in Los Angeles.

Vega, on the other hand, was guaranteed only $650, becoming the first of many fighters in my career to earn a lot less than I did but as would be the case with nearly everyone I faced, he did not come close to matching me as a box office draw. My fights attracted national television coverage and fans who didn’t normally follow boxing. For the first time in decades, since perhaps the original Sugar Ray, nonheavy-weights made headlines. And journeymen professionals such as Luis Vega were granted a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pull off the upset and become famous, and perhaps rich in their own right. With Ali nearing the end of his magnificent run, someone needed to seize the throne.

The fight, to be carried by CBS, generated a terrific amount of hype, the marquee at the Civic Center reading: PRO DEBUT, SUGAR RAY LEONARD, SATURDAY FEB. 5, 4 P.M. Billboards and banners were plastered on practically every block downtown. Taking a page from the Ali playbook, I predicted a knockout in the fourth round, and figured Vega might go sooner. If that wasn’t arrogant enough, I sent a letter to President Jimmy Carter inviting him to the event. Surprisingly, Carter, in office for only two weeks, found a better way to spend his Saturday afternoon.

Janks approached me in the dressing room. I expected words of encouragement, perhaps a last-minute suggestion on how I should approach this memorable night. Instead, there was only one person he was thinking about, and that was Janks Morton.

The matter was dealt with eventually, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that for the first time, I realized how money could affect those closest to me, and it would not be the last time. I loved Janks Morton, and I’ll always be grateful for his generosity during those uncertain weeks after the Olympics. He handed me cash, almost every day, it seemed, that he could have easily used for his family. But that didn’t excuse his selfishness. I saw a side of him I never saw before, and it would change our relationship forever.

After kissing my father, I climbed between the ropes to a warm ovation and the theme song from the Olympics. I took off my purple robe with stars on the sleeves—this was showbiz, after all—and said a brief prayer.

Vega was not a strong puncher, but he was fearless, withstanding the barrage of roundhouse lefts and rights I fired round after round. Despite his woeful record, he had never been knocked down. I could see why. He did deserve to be called the Bull.

His face growing red and puffy, a cut opening under his left eye, Vega kept moving forward. So this was what it was like in the pros? With their livelihoods on the line, not just their reputations, other fighters would come after me with everything they had. I danced and did the Ali shuffle to entertain the fans, cruising to the decision by winning every round on each of the three judges’ cards. Yet it was not nearly as routine as it might have seemed. It rarely was.

More than ten thousand spectators showed up at the Civic Center, guaranteeing that I would make the forty thousand dollars, enough to soon pay back the investors. Mike Trainer had thought that I might have to secure a part-time job to fulfill my obligations to them, and that it could take years. It took months. We did not spend any of the money and no one ever had to lend me another dime.

With my first fight in the books, Mike Trainer set out to finalize a longer deal with one of the networks. Prior to the Vega contest, he went back and forth from one section of the Holiday Inn restaurant in Baltimore to the other, meeting with CBS and ABC representatives. In the end, we signed a six-fight package with ABC for about $400,000 in rights fees. Once Mike learned the fight game, and it didn’t take him long, he never wavered in his belief in my earning potential. He made deals directly with auditorium owners, increasing our share of the profits. Needless to say, the boxing insiders were not thrilled with Mike Trainer.

Willie was no Vega, winning ten of his eleven bouts, the lone setback coming against Rufus Miller, whom he defeated in the rematch. Willie possessed a solid left jab, a long reach, swift hands, and good footwork. In other words, he presented what Angelo was looking for, a test. Little did I know how much of a test.

In the fourth round, Willie landed a few solid blows, chipping one of my teeth. If the battle with Vega was a lesson in resiliency, the battle with Willie showed me the difference in punching power between the amateurs and the pros. Nobody, not even the Cuban, Andres Aldama, nailed me as hard as Willie did. What had I gotten myself into? I wondered. I had a gold medal in my possession, Angelo Dundee in my corner, and more cash than I could possibly spend, but I was a long way from taking on the premier fighters in my division. As it turned out, it was a blessing that Willie hurt me. I got mad, and when I got mad, I fought with a sense of urgency I didn’t always exhibit. I held Willie at bay, registering a unanimous decision, and nearly knocked him down during the last two rounds. The fight was a turning point. At 141 pounds, I came in too light. For my next bout, I weighed 142 and was up to 145 within six months.

The hard work was only beginning. Over the next twelve months I fought nine times and starting with my fourth fight, against Frank Santore in the fall of 1977, they went from a scheduled six rounds to eight, and in the spring of 1978, to ten.

To build the extra stamina I would require if the fights went the distance, I sparred for longer periods, and more frequently. With every match I felt more confident, my delivery crisper, my defenses more alert, my footwork more elusive. I didn’t punch from my toes, as I did against Vega and Rodriguez. I learned how to plant my feet properly to maximize the impact of every blow. Most fighters look directly at the target when they throw a punch. I never looked at the other man’s face or his midsection. I began to see his entire body in a single frame. My fists knew where to go. I spent hours watching film of the top fighters from the past, taking mental notes of their tendencies, filing away strategies for use at a later date.

Still, the critics—and every fighter has had them—found fault with the lack of quality in my competition and the lack of power in my repertoire, and posed the question all boxers must eventually address: Could I take a punch?

The critics were dead wrong. I was doing what young fighters had done in every weight class, gradually moving up in the level of difficulty. I was knocking my opponents out, four falling in the first three rounds. What more did they want me from me? As for taking a punch, not once did I come close to hitting the deck. The real problem was that a significant segment of the written press resented the fact that I’d been discovered and promoted by television instead of in their daily columns. The balance of power in sports journalism was shifting, and they were slow to adapt.

I didn’t let the criticism get to me. I saved my energy for training and disposing of whatever challenges Angelo put in front of me. I never questioned the matches he made. If he knew how to guide Ali on a steady course toward a title shot against Liston, he surely had a plan for me. I fought once a month, which was plenty. After each fight, I would take about a week off before training for the next.

That does not mean Angelo and I didn’t have our moments. The one I recall most vividly took place during my thirteenth pro fight, against Dick Eklund at Hynes Auditorium in Boston. Eklund was a white guy from the city of Lowell, about an hour away. The fans were unruly for most of the night, a number of them shouting, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” I should have known the abuse was coming. Several days earlier, when I arrived at the Boston airport, I was greeted by a priest who said, “How are you, boy?” “Boy”! From a servant of God!

I tried to block the insults from my mind, but the anger kept simmering inside me to the point of affecting my performance. I could not put my normal flurries together. When I sat on the stool during one break, Angelo let me have it.

I didn’t have a problem with most of what Angelo said. He was right. I had a problem with the way he said it. He yelled at me, and yelling always made me angry, no doubt from the times I heard my parents raise their voices and the panic it caused. Some fighters need their trainers to berate them on occasion. I wasn’t one of them. Angelo treated me as an infant, not a contender for the welterweight title.

I didn’t respond. Nor did I speak to Angelo for the duration of the bout, which I won by decision. If I could have found a way, I wouldn’t have gone back to the corner at all. After the verdict was announced, I bolted from the ring. I did not linger with my seconds to celebrate the victory. I didn’t give a damn about the fight itself. I tracked down Mike Trainer in the dressing room.

Mike told Angelo how I felt. Mike always looked out for my feelings, as well as my finances, and, as usual, the issue was resolved. Angelo and I never spoke about it, and for the rest of our years together he never talked down to me again. If anything, we grew closer as the stakes grew higher. We would be forever linked, the white Italian from Philadelphia and the black kid from Palmer Park.

Angelo was my official trainer, but he didn’t train me the way people thought. I’d been trained already by Pepe Correa, Dave Jacobs, and Janks Morton. I used to laugh at the stories in the paper that gave the credit to Angelo for swooping in a week or two before every fight with the magical formula to get me ready. I mean no disrespect to him, but if I did not have a strategy by that point, I wasn’t going to find one in a few days. His true value was in the corner during the battle, and as a matchmaker. In those roles, there was no one else who could have served me any better.

Never was Angelo’s skill as a matchmaker more critical than during the summer of 1978. After the Eklund fight, there was the possibility that I would next go against a promising young fighter from Emanuel Steward’s Kronk Gym in Detroit, where I had occasionally trained as an amateur. His name was Tommy Hearns. The money would be hard to resist, around $100,000. I didn’t know Tommy very well, though the two of us sparred for a few days before my sixth fight, in December 1977 against Hector Diaz in D.C., and got along just fine. I looked forward to the challenge.

Everything was moving forward—until Dan Doyle, a promoter we worked with in New England, got a call around midnight from an anxious Angelo Dundee. Angelo had just returned, according to Dan, from a fishing trip in the Florida Keys.

Tommy was not a star yet—through that July, he had fought only ten times and just once outside the state of Michigan—but Angelo recognized his talent and feared the possibility of an upset. He also envisioned the day, perhaps a year or two away, when I would fight Tommy for a lot more than $100,000. In October, when Hearns demolished Pedro Rojas in the first round, Angelo appeared wiser than ever.

What would have happened if Tommy and I had fought in 1978 instead of our duel for the ages three years later? I can’t be certain, though regardless of the outcome, the fight would have altered the rest of my career, and probably not for the better. A loss might have postponed my first title shot for a year, if not longer. A win might have kept Tommy from developing into the force he became, thus depriving me of my most glorious triumph.

After I turned pro, Mike assumed that with Angelo on board as my manager, he would return to his law practice in Silver Spring. It wasn’t until much later, long after it became clear that Angelo had no intention of taking on the traditional duties of a boxer’s manager, such as scheduling and contracting bouts, that Mike began to bill me at an hourly rate. Mike wrote a series of strongly worded letters urging Angelo to abide by his responsibilities but got nowhere. I would have done the same thing if I were in Mike’s position, dealing with someone who expected everyone else to do the tasks he was assigned.

Angelo wouldn’t give in. My career, meanwhile, couldn’t be put on hold while there was friction between the two most influential members of my team. Any delay in my progress toward a title shot could prove costly. Mike kept me posted, although to preserve my neutrality in the dispute, and my friendship with Angelo, I stayed out of the firing line. They would settle their differences later. Or so I assumed.

Providence was similar to many of the cities where I fought during the first two years of my career, and it was no coincidence. In each area where a fight was held, the national telecast was blacked out, which would have deprived us of too much revenue if it had been staged in a larger market. Another benefit was that if I could draw well in these venues, which I did regularly, in places such as Dayton, Ohio; Springfield, Massachusetts; and Portland, Maine, the networks would take extra notice of how popular a commodity I was becoming. It was no different than starting in New Haven in hopes of landing a role on Broadway.

Mayweather, ranked ninth by The Ring magazine, the sport’s unofficial bible, presented a serious test, if not as dangerous as Hearns. The timing was perfect. It was not as if I were taking on only tomato cans, as we called the less accomplished fighters, but nor were any of them the reincarnation of Jake LaMotta. After nearly two years as a professional, I needed to find out what I knew and, more important, what I did not know. Mayweather was a slick boxer and very fast, with fifteen victories and only one defeat.

He scored well in the opening round but I was not too worried. I wanted to see what he had, and, thankfully, it was something I could handle. From then on, I owned Mayweather, pummeling him with overhand rights to the head and attacks to the midsection. That was the difference between me and Mayweather, as well as the other welterweight contenders from my era. I could dance and punch, despite what some members of the press believed. I knocked him down twice in the eighth, and the fight was halted, mercifully, in the final minute of the tenth, and last, round. A month later, I avenged my loss to Randy Shields, who beat me as an amateur, with a unanimous decision. I was fifteen for fifteen.

In January 1979, I took on Johnny Gant. Johnny does not rank up there with Hagler, Hearns, or Duran. Yet, like Bobby Magruder, Johnny was a star in D.C. and Maryland. Although his record was far from perfect (44–11–3), he knew how to pick his spots. Johnny was as mentally tough as they come, and given his background, it made sense. He grew up in the projects of Lincoln Heights and was sent to a youth correctional facility in Virginia when he was sixteen for driving the getaway car during an armed robbery. He served nineteeen months.

Johnny was tutored by a pretty decent trainer: Angelo Dundee. Angelo, forced to decide between Johnny and me, chose to be in my corner for the fight. He was no idiot. Johnny was thirty, an old man in a young man’s profession, any realistic chance for a life-changing payday long behind him. I was only twenty-two, with many paydays on the horizon.

For some reason, I wasn’t too fired up during the sparring sessions, to the point where Roger whipped me on a consistent basis. Roger had not whipped me since I was fifteen. My other sparring partners pummeled me with jabs and right hands. My efforts became so sluggish that Dave Jacobs couldn’t take it any longer.

One would assume facing Johnny Gant before a large crowd at the Capital Centre would have been enough to motivate me. The only explanation is that I was suffering from the classic burnout only other boxers can relate to: too many hours in the gym, too many miles on the road, too many aches and pains in parts of my body I did not know existed. For almost a full decade, except for maybe two months after the Olympics when my future was in limbo, I drove myself with no limitations and no excuses. After going pro, I fought seventeen times in less than two years. Everything was moving fast. Too fast.

Getting out of the gym wasn’t the solution. I needed to get out of the state. If I stuck around Palmer Park, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from sparring, and given the mood I was in, that was the last thing I should do.

I flew to Vermont, where I had spent the final month of training for the Olympics. In Vermont, there was little to do but rest and hang out with friends I met in 1976. While I was not the type to bond with nature, the slow, tranquil environment, a far cry from the intensity of the gym, gave me the space to think. I asked myself: How badly did I want to be a world champion? Was I willing to do whatever was necessary? The same effort that had propelled me to win the gold would be required to win the crown. After about a week of R&R, I knew the answer. I couldn’t wait to get home and back to the gym. In Palmer Park, I was a new man, whipping Roger and the other sparring partners with ease. I was ready for Johnny Gant.

On fight night, the atmosphere in the building, filled with nearly twenty thousand people, some paying as much as thirty dollars per ticket, was unlike that of any of my prior engagements. The two of us were fighting for a lot more than Washington bragging rights. I was fighting to strengthen my case for a title shot. Johnny was fighting to strengthen his case for more matches against top contenders. His window was rapidly closing. The veterans placed their bets on Johnny; the younger guys, on me.

The fight began. At the outset, Johnny called me “boy.” Knowing he was out of his league, he was obviously trying to get me riled up. He did just that, but that was not a good idea—for Johnny. I respected him, but nobody called me “boy.” I’d make him pay.

I battered him with an early combination and didn’t let up for the rest of the evening. He landed a few strong rights to my head during the fifth round—he wouldn’t be Johnny Gant if he didn’t put up a fight—but I fended them off without any trouble. In the eighth, I connected with a left, a right, and an uppercut. Before long, Johnny was on the canvas.

He got up and took the mandatory eight-count, but he was in a daze. I went right at him again. I was not one to hold back when my opponent was in trouble, no matter what chance there was of inflicting permanent damage. Fights can turn in a matter of seconds, and the next thing you know you’re the one who is getting beaten up, and believe me, the guy doing it will not show you any mercy. After a few more lefts and rights, the referee stopped the fight, and it was lucky for Johnny, who would have been seriously hurt, a fate I wished on none of my foes. Almost none. Duran will come later.

After the Gant fight, in which I made about $200,000, I knocked out Fernand Marcotte and Daniel Gonzalez, and recorded a unanimous decision over Adolfo Viruet. In May 1979 came the battle in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, against Mexico’s Marcos Geraldo—and another round in the battle between Mike Trainer and Angelo Dundee. I made sure again to stay out of it. There was enough for me to deal with inside the ropes.

Mike was upset that Angelo had thrown me in there against Geraldo, a middleweight. I knew I was in for a rough night when I saw him at the weigh-in. All he had on was his underwear and yet he made me look like Luis Vega. He had me by nearly ten pounds.

The first punch Geraldo landed did not make me any more secure. His power wasn’t real, I told myself, each punch capable of knocking my head off. One stinging right I’ll never forget shook me up so much that I started to see three Geraldos in front of me and I didn’t know which one to hit. I began to dance, which was usually how I cleared my head. Not this time. I still saw three men. Fortunately, I aimed for the right one, the one in the middle, and landed enough solid blows to capture the decision. The victory came with a cost. While I have no proof, I believe the problems with my detached retina, diagnosed three years later, originated with the damage from Geraldo. My left eye was horribly swollen, and it was the first time I experienced double vision. Thank goodness I was in superb shape or I might have lost to Geraldo, and there’s no telling how that would have impacted the rest of my career.

At the same time, I learned a lot about myself that night. I learned how to summon, from somewhere deep within, the extra will I didn’t know I possessed. Knowing it was there, and could be tapped again, gave me the boost of confidence I would rely on for years to come. Most boxers don’t go that deep, and it’s not because the will can’t be summoned. It can. The hesitation comes from the pain one must tolerate to do it. You become exhausted and convinced you’ve given your last possible breath. As Ali memorably put it, in referring to the latter rounds of the “Thrilla in Manila,” you feel you’re on the verge of death. That, however, is precisely when you must give more of yourself, no matter how much it hurts. That is what separates the good fighters from those who make history.

On the other hand, some suggest it is also when a fighter may give too much, his desire to prevail greater than his instinct to survive, and thus open himself up to the most severe consequences, his reflexes too weak to match his resilience. Yet, while a wounded fighter may be the worst judge of his faculties, he should never surrender. That’s why there are three men in the ring instead of two. Allow the experienced referee to stop the proceedings if he senses one combatant is threatening to cause irreparable harm to the other. A fighter can never possess too much heart.

“People told me that he couldn’t take a punch,” said Angelo, who had never seen Geraldo fight in person. “Look at all the times he’s been knocked out. He’s got a glass chin.”

The problems between Mike Trainer and Angelo Dundee, however, were not about to be resolved at a hotel bar in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They were never to be resolved. Each went back to his neutral corner and that’s how it remained until Angelo finally left the team in the late eighties.

With my consent, Mike rewrote Angelo’s contract to pay him 15 percent of each purse, with a cap of $75,000 for a nontitle fight and $150,000 if a crown was at stake. The days of seven-figure paydays were coming soon and the last thing he wanted to see was Angelo make a fortune when he did not, in Mike’s opinion, fulfill his duties. The new arrangement would wind up costing Angelo millions. In the Hearns fight, for instance, he would have received $1.8 million of my $12 million take instead of $150,000. On the day before the bout, Angelo refused to leave his hotel room after it had been reported on television that Hearns’s trainer and manager, Emanuel Steward, was taking home a much larger percentage of his fighter’s earnings.

Angelo complained in his book several years ago he wished I had stood up for him in the contract dispute with Mike. With all due respect, he is totally off base. I stood up for him plenty, which made Mike tread much more carefully, as he knew I admired Angelo and would never accept his dismissal. Working for me from my debut in 1977 through the Hagler fight ten years later afforded Angelo the chance to stay in the spotlight long after his first meal ticket, Ali, retired, and make a ton of money. The truth is he has no one to blame but himself. He failed to do what he was hired to do. In this corrupt business, I had to pick one person to trust, and that was Mike Trainer. He never let me down.

In the spring of 1979, before I made easy work of Tony Chiaverini and Pete Ranzany—neither fighter made it into the fifth round—Mike and Angelo moved ahead with the plans for my long-awaited title shot. The man standing in the way of me and the belt was WBC welterweight champion Wilfred Benitez. After the two sides reached an agreement on the most delicate part of the negotiations—the money, naturally—a deal was inked for the fight to take place on November 30. What a deal it was: a whopping $1.2 million for Benitez and $1 million for yours truly, both record paydays for nonheavyweights.

The Benitez camp argued that, as the champion, he deserved more money than I did, though Mike rightly pointed out that neither of us would be anywhere near the seven-figure territory if it weren’t for my ability to attract nonboxing fans, and interest from the networks. We gave in, but the contest, at least, was slated for Caesars Palace, where I loved to fight.

Price’s record (28–5–3) wasn’t especially noteworthy, but two of those victories came in nontitle bouts, against the highly regarded Carlos Palomino and future World Boxing Association welterweight champion Pipino Cuevas. A strong case could’ve been made that I was assuming an unnecessary risk by fighting a top-notch opponent on the eve of my first giant payday. What if Price, ranked eighth by The Ring, landed a lucky punch and pulled off an upset? Stranger things had happened. Gone would be the date with Benitez and the $1 million, and there’d be no guarantee I would receive a payday like that again. I didn’t see it that way, which meant I was either naïve or arrogant, probably both. I was also greedy. I’d earn $300,000, not too shabby for an evening’s work.

In preparing for Price, I studied films of his fights, depending on the strategist I trusted more than anyone: myself. That takes nothing away from the outstanding suggestions made over the years by Angelo, Jake, Janks, and Pepe. Yet it was only when I saw the grainy black-andwhite footage on the screen that I could begin to anticipate how a fight might play out, round by round. I was trying to solve a riddle. If I figured it out, the other man was in trouble. If I didn’t, I was. When I reflect on what I miss most about my boxing career, it isn’t the noise in the arena or the articles in the papers or the camaraderie in camp. I miss the hours and hours of searching for the ways to exploit my opponent’s weaknesses.

Price was the one who needed the luck and he didn’t get it. I caught him with a vicious uppercut to the jaw in the opening round and his hands dropped to his sides. A fighter’s hands usually come down in the later rounds when fatigue sets in. For his hands to fall in the first minute or two was not a positive sign for any Price fans.