The Big Fight

The WBA and WBC crowns, which I vacated, were seized in 1983 by Donald Curry and Milton McCrory while Hearns moved up to the light-middleweight ranks to capture his own title, outdueling another former adversary of mine, Wilfred Benitez, in fifteen rounds. Hagler, meanwhile, as ferocious as ever, knocked out Tony Sibson in the sixth round, Wilford Scypion in the fourth. Even Duran, now in his early thirties, was back in decent form, on a mission to make everybody forget New Orleans. All the great fighters from my era were doing what they did best.

Almost all. I was in a much different fight and losing badly, the plunges into alcohol and coke more frequent, and dangerous, than before. With my departure from the sport official, gone was any possibility of an imminent return to the world I relied on to avoid the pain. Without any warning, I’d be reminded of the two men who sexually abused me. Or the memory of my parents cursing one another, screaming, wailing, and out of control, would suddenly overwhelm me.

I carried on as best I could, the commentary I did for HBO, as well as CBS, giving me a chance to spend time in an environment I cherished, and with people I admired. It became tough, though, come fight night, when the old jitters reappeared, except that I would be putting on my tuxedo instead of my trunks, and it would not matter what I saw in my bathroom mirror. Yet once the bell rang, I was relieved to be sitting in the front row, where left hooks were not allowed. I clearly had made the right decision.

At home, carrying on wasn’t as easy. Spending time with Juanita made me realize that we should have never been married in the first place, and that was entirely because of me, not her. I wasn’t ready to fully commit in January 1980, when we tied the knot, and I wasn’t ready three years later. We were too young when we fell in love, me only sixteen, Juanita fifteen, knowing almost nothing about the world and ourselves. Only a year later, we were parents, of which we knew even less. Then came the Games in Montreal and my pro career and the train that could not stop, the train I did not want to stop. I wasn’t equipped to handle the demands of both fame and matrimony. One had to lose out, and one did.

Juanita did everything she could to keep us together. She even snorted cocaine with me. She felt that if she could be as cool as the women I partied with, I would not need to party with them any longer. She and I once did coke from midnight until around eight or nine the next morning. We did so much her nose began to bleed.

“That’s it,” Juanita said. “I will never do any coke again.” She never did. I wish I could have been as strong as she was. She wasn’t anything like those other women and stopped trying to be. She was better. I was also ashamed to have her see me in that condition. I was used to doing coke with people I barely knew. I didn’t care what they thought. But I had known Juanita since before there was a Sugar Ray, and never wanted her to think any less of me.

I would stumble into bed, drunk or high or both, and demand sex, and if Juanita didn’t give it to me, I’d accuse her of having boyfriends she didn’t have. To her credit, she didn’t back down. She would search the house for my cocaine and flush a gram or two down the toilet. That’s when we’d have our loudest arguments. We made Cicero and Getha Leonard look like Ozzie and Harriet.

Soon, a full year had passed since retirement number two. On the actual anniversary, in fact, I was in Las Vegas to do the commentary for the Duran-Hagler fight. Marvin was a heavy favorite, as Duran, despite impressive wins earlier in 1983 against Cuevas and Davey Moore, was considered past his prime. Nonetheless, he put forth a tremendous effort, almost pulling off the upset, and that’s when he told me how I could succeed against Hagler by boxing him. They were the first kind words Duran had said to me since we taped the 7UP commercial in the summer of 1980. I found it amusing that the other boxers felt much more at ease talking to me after I was no longer a threat. That was not a problem for me. I could have a friendly chat with my opponent in the weeks leading to a fight and still want to kick his ass once the bell rang.

Several hours after the fight, in my hotel suite, I paused to reflect on what Duran said to me and I got excited. Come to think of it, I always got excited after watching Hagler in action. I realized that he was not as invincible as the media made him out to be. He was as flawed as the rest of us, and I knew exactly how to take advantage of those flaws. I’d box him just as Duran had suggested. That’s what he did for fifteen rounds. But when the sun came up the next morning, the excitement was gone. If there was a way to outmaneuver Hagler, someone else would have to try. I was not ready to face anyone, let alone the best pound-for-pound fighter on the planet.

Nonetheless, I continued to work out two or three times a week. Which is why when Kenny and his good friend J. D. Brown asked me to take part in an exhibition entitled “Holiday Salute to the Armed Forces,” which they were planning for Andrews Air Force Base outside D.C. on December 10, I agreed without hesitation. In addition to supporting Kenny, I’d be able to do two things I loved: boxing and performing in front of the public. I saw the evening as nothing more than that, an exhibition.

I couldn’t show up, however, without bringing my A game—well, at least the closest I could come to one after not boxing at all for twenty-two long months. I’d be taking on professional fighters, not a sailor on the QEII, and if I wasn’t sharp, physically and mentally, it would become obvious in a hurry. I could get hurt. Worse, I could get humiliated. If I no longer had my career, I did have my reputation. Almost every day for over a month I trained, not for a Duran or a Hearns, perhaps, but enough to hold my own against the two fighters I would be facing at Andrews for three rounds apiece, Odell Leonard and Herman Epps. I was thrilled to be back in the gym, my home away from home. I wasn’t thrilled to be back at Mount Motherfuck, but the grueling runs were essential. They always were. I didn’t notice any profound changes right away, but as the days wore on, I began to realize how much I missed my old life. I felt like a fighter again.

I told Mike Trainer and he didn’t read much into it. Mike was used to me toying with the possibility of making a return and then dropping the entire matter. I once told him to meet me in his office the following Monday morning to make plans for a comeback. When I showed up, I never brought the matter up and neither did he. Mike, if truth be told, would have been happy to see me retire as far back as the Benitez fight in 1979, and when I did finally quit, he thought I had made the correct decision. I also called Charlie Brotman to suggest he invite a group of reporters to the exhibition. I wasn’t ready to announce a comeback just yet, but thought it would be convenient to have the press around in case that’s what I decided.

There was no title at stake, but I was as nervous as I could be when I stepped between the ropes inside Hangar 3 at Andrews in front of only the press, employees from the Department of Defense, and air force personnel. I was fit enough, weighing 151 pounds, but still could not tell where my mind was and would not be sure until I threw my first punch and the first punch hit me.

Within a few seconds, the answer came: I was totally into it. I was thinking my way around the ring, plotting the next move like a chess match, the way I always fought, except against Duran in Montreal. I experienced the familiar rush I got whenever I landed a good shot and could not wait to land the next one. I was moving well, too, slipping one punch after another. I was so comfortable that I took off my headgear and put it back on only after I was ordered to by the officials. I felt the same feelings I had in the workouts and knew I’d be foolish to ignore them. In the third round, I put Epps on the deck. Against Odell Leonard, I was in command from start to finish. The six rounds went by in a flash. I could have easily gone six more.

Telling Juanita was another matter entirely. Nobody was happier than she was on that evening in Baltimore. She had wanted me to retire on so many occasions, I lost count, and it was not just about getting me away from the ring and the risk I took every time the bell rang. For Juanita, retirement meant the demise of the one man who constantly got between her and her husband. She loved the life boxing gave us but she hated Sugar Ray. Unfortunately, as she soon discovered, I did not need to be an active fighter to play the part. Sugar Ray could survive on alcohol and coke and the attention he received from his boys and his fans, and no amount of fancy jewelry and luxury cars he gave his wife could begin to make up for the pain he inflicted. She was running out of hope, until the fall of 1983, when she learned she was pregnant. If Juanita could not save our marriage, perhaps a baby could. We had been trying for more than a year, Juanita even taking fertility pills. We tried despite our problems, or rather, because of them. I was in Vegas when she put Ray Jr. on the phone to relay the news. I was so excited I almost took the next flight home.

I could not have picked a worse time. She was in the hospital, suffering from something called hyperemesis, an illness causing nausea and dehydration. When I arrived from the exhibition, she was sound asleep. I lay down quietly in the cot next to her bed, praying to come up with the right words when I knew there were none. I fell asleep as well.

Why was I coming back, and wouldn’t I be going against the very fans whose opinions supposedly meant the world to me? Wouldn’t they perceive me as just another hardheaded fighter who couldn’t stay away, who needed the adulation—and the money—he could not obtain anywhere else? I took pride in making a clean getaway from a sport in which there are few happy endings. I would be throwing that distinction away for good.

For a change, the wishes of others did not matter. What mattered was how I felt. I never wanted to quit on that night in Baltimore. Sure, I was not at my best against Finch and I was not motivated to take on Stafford. Yet, throw a Marvin Hagler or a Tommy Hearns in front of me and I would have been out for blood. I lived for those challenges. I was out to make history and I could not do it wearing a monkey suit and a headset, watching others steal the glory.

Furthermore, in no way could I be compared to an over-the-hill Joe Louis taking on Rocky Marciano in his prime, or an immobile Muhammad Ali attempting to wrest the crown away from a younger, more powerful Larry Holmes. Louis was thirty-seven; Ali, thirty-eight. I was twenty-seven, younger than Hagler (twenty-nine), for heaven’s sake. A strong argument could be made that my best years were ahead of me. I was positive of one thing: Unless I returned, I would spend the rest of my life wondering how great I might have become. And as for any fears about my detached retina, if Dr. Michels wasn’t concerned, neither was I and neither should anyone else be. The only questions were: Whom do I fight, and when?

Not Hagler, that’s for sure. He was too big and too good. I was cocky, but not cocky enough to assume I could jump back into the ring after two years off and compete at Hagler’s level, and in a higher weight class, no less. I would need a tune-up or two, at least, before taking him on or, for that matter, any of the bigger names.

We decided on Kevin Howard. Kevin who? It was a fair question. Howard had lost four of his twenty-four bouts, one of his victories, I kid you not, coming against a fighter named Richard Nixon. Only in boxing. We chose Howard because he was slow and never kept himself in the best shape. I saw the fight when he lost eleven of twelve rounds to Marlon Starling. Marlon Starling! I was guaranteed $3 million, an unprecedented total for a nontitle match against an unknown. Howard also agreed to wear thumbless gloves, for which we proposed to obtain approval from the state boxing commission. Being poked in the eye by the thumb was considered to be the leading cause of detached retinas. Howard would receive $125,000 for his night’s work, by far the largest check of his career. The ten-round junior middleweight bout was set for February 25 at the Centrum in Worcester, Massachusetts.

In the gym, one of the necessary adjustments I had to make, and it sounds strange, was to program my face to learn how to take hits again. After being out for such an extended period, the first blows I absorbed hurt in ways they never hurt before. My skin texture, not accustomed to the trauma, swelled quickly. I also had to prepare myself mentally, to again summon the commitment to throw a punch and not worry about the punches coming back. For me, it was no problem. In retirement, I gained a greater appreciation of how blessed I had been to make a living in a profession I loved. I was not about to waste a second chance.

Things at home were looking up, too. I was not out getting high or drunk every night. Being in the gym, I didn’t need the coke anymore. Juanita and I were very excited about the baby, due in June. It would be much different from when Ray Jr. was born. There would be no concerns about money or how my parents might feel, and everybody would be together instead of living in two separate homes. I saw it as an opportunity to atone for the mistakes I made the first time. I promised myself I would be there for our new child in ways I never was for little Ray.

It was just as we were putting our lives back together that Juanita got sick again, coming down with an ulcer in her esophagus. She couldn’t digest an ounce of food. She would go into the hospital for four or five days until she could again digest properly and return home, but the problem would once more flare up and she’d be in for another four or five days. She dropped twenty-five pounds in a few months, and doctors told Juanita that if the next remedy they tried did not work, they would have to abort the baby or risk losing her. The idea, a feeding tube that went up her nose and down her throat past the ulcer, did work, thank God, and both she and the fetus were safe. I didn’t think about it at the time, but the ulcer was clearly related to the stress caused by our arguments. The prospect of a new baby wasn’t bringing us closer, as Juanita prayed it would. It did, for perhaps a month or two, but I became too busy being Sugar Ray again. I couldn’t get rid of him.

If the ulcer was not alarming enough, Juanita then contracted a disease known as Bell’s palsy. The right side of her face became paralyzed, which she did not realize until her mom asked, “Why is your face crooked?” I cried like a baby when I saw her in the hospital. With medication and treatment, it returned to normal, though stress again was the cause. Her pregnancy, except for brief intervals, was an ordeal for the whole nine months.

I tried to be there for Juanita as often as possible, but I had a fight to worry about. In early February, we moved training camp to Massachusetts for the last stretch. I was ready to entertain the fans once more with my footwork. I was ready to land jabs to set up the rights. I was ready to have my face take its licks and not flinch. I was ready for anything.

On February 13, less than two weeks before the Howard fight, I was undergoing a routine examination by retinal specialist Edward Ryan of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary when he discovered an area of retinal thinning in my right eye. That’s just wonderful, I thought, now my right eye is having problems.

The good news, and believe me, I was dying for any good news, was that the solution was a relatively minor procedure called cryotherapy, in which Dr. Ryan created scar tissue and strenghtened the retina, the whole operation taking only a few minutes. I was also relieved that there was no connection with the detached retina in the left eye. The bad news was that the Howard bout would end up being postponed till May 11. I was crushed. After spending weeks attempting to convince the public I was not risking more harm to my left eye, I was forced to address questions about the right one. I gave thought to quitting on the spot, interpreting the latest setback as a sign that maybe God, sensing I didn’t receive his earlier message, did not want me to fight again.

The problem was that by this stage of my preparations, I was in the zone again. I didn’t get there against Finch, nowhere near it, and wouldn’t have gotten there if the Stafford bout had been held. And now that I was there, I was afraid I would not be able to find my way back.

Once I received permission from the doctors, I went back to the gym, training mostly with sparring partners who could race around the ring. I wasn’t worried about power. The power would return. I was concerned about speed and accuracy. Those are the attributes a boxer loses the most when he’s off for too long. Ali, in his postexile years, turned into a stationary target who fought bravely with Frazier and Shavers and the other brawlers of his generation. The result is still difficult to accept.

The weeks flew by. Before I knew it, it was May 11. At last, I would be inside the ropes for the first time in twenty-seven months. Except, as I feared, I never did get back in the zone I was in prior to the postponement. It was reminiscent of the Duran fight in Montreal. My biorhythms were off. The signs came early, and often, that it was not going to be my night.

The first sign came shortly after I climbed under the ropes. I liked to get loose for a few minutes, receive the ref’s instructions, stare menacingly at my opponent in a last-ditch psych job, say a prayer, and then get down to business. But after the national anthem, sung beautifully by my sister Sandy, I was forced to wait for the ring announcer to introduce Donald Curry, Aaron Pryor, and, finally, Hagler. Hagler, a Massachusetts resident, received a loud ovation. One would have thought he was fighting, not me. The delay started to get on my nerves. Normally, I would be too focused to allow such a minor intrusion to distract me while I prepared for battle.

The second sign came in my corner between the first and second rounds. The first three minutes had gone as expected. I slid cautiously from side to side, getting a feel for Howard, and a feel for the situation—the noise of the crowd, the heat from the lights, the other man anxious to send me to the deck. I was also, contrary to my statements before the fight, concerned about my left eye and what might happen if I was hit there again. Who wouldn’t be?

The most unusual thing occurred during that first break: I talked. I never talked in the corner. I didn’t talk when Angelo berated me during the Eklund fight. I also looked away; at what, I don’t remember. The point is that I was not where I needed to be.

If that wasn’t disturbing enough, Howard was proving to be a more worthy adversary than anyone in my camp had anticipated. He hit hard and I should have seen it coming from the moment I touched his shoulder during the prefight press conference. Howard’s muscles were defined, cut. Whoever did the scouting report was either poorly mistaken or Howard put in more time than usual at the gym.

In the third, I clowned around a little as I did during the seventh round of the Duran rematch. I did it to fire myself up more than for the spectators, and it seemed to pay off. I was into the fight. Howard did not back off, though, gaining more respect, but I was Sugar Ray Leonard and it was only a matter of time before there was a knockdown.

It happened with about thirty seconds left in the fourth round. After I threw a careless left jab, he responded with a solid right, the punch landing squarely on my jaw. I was back on my feet immediately, but the damage had been done, to my ego, mostly. In thirty-three previous fights, no one—not Benitez, not Duran, not Hearns, no one—had done this to me, and to think the man to register my first official knockdown was Kevin Howard, a four-time loser, remains as hard to believe today as it was on that eerie night in Worcester.

Within seconds, once I got over the shock, I made two snap decisions: I would fight as hard as I fought in my entire life to make Howard pay for what he did, and then I’d never fight again. If Howard could put me down, imagine what Hagler could do.

Before the fifth round, I stood in my corner and waved to Juanita at ringside to assure her I was not hurt. I had been worried about her. She had been through a lot over the last six months and didn’t take it too well whenever I got hit hard. There was also somebody else’s welfare to consider. Her due date was only a few weeks away.

Late in the eighth, I landed my best combinations of the night. Howard was hurt. He hung on until the bell but I pounced on him again midway through the ninth. With about thirty seconds to go in the round, the referee stopped the fight. Howard was furious and he had every right to be. Though I was connecting with one clean shot after another, he remained alert enough to force a clinch and defend himself. Howard got a bit carried away, however, later telling the press that the only reason the fight was called was because he was on his way to winning a decision. First of all, it wasn’t true—I was ahead on each of the three cards—and second, I would have knocked him out if the fight had lasted much longer. To his credit, Howard apologized to me in the locker room afterward for his comments.

Typically, after a victory, I’d celebrate in one form or another. Not on this night. There was nothing to be proud of. It took me nine rounds to put away an ex–club fighter. Some tune-up. The tune-up made me look like a club fighter.

Shortly after I was interviewed in the ring by Larry Merchant from HBO, Juanita, Ray Jr., and I met for a few minutes in a vacant bathroom. I told them about the decision I reached after the knockdown, to retire once more. They seemed relieved, especially Juanita. She was getting her husband back just in time to welcome the new addition to our family.

I wasted no time in informing the writers, who praised me in the ensuing days for coming to the only sane conclusion. Those who weren’t very pleased included Hagler, denied yet again a likely eight-figure payday, Kenny, and J. D. Brown. Kenny and J.D. had launched a new promotion company, and saw me as their chief attraction. When news of my announcement spread, they rushed into the interview room to find out for themselves. They didn’t dare say a word to me, though the expressions on their faces said plenty: How could you do this to us? This was our one chance to make a fortune.

After the conference ended, the reporters rushed back to their typewriters to compose another Sugar Ray Leonard obituary. This time I meant it, though, and there wasn’t the deep sadness I experienced after the event in Baltimore. It was not the public that was the driving force behind this decision. It was me. It was my inability to be the fighter I once was and was now convinced I would never be again.

In June, everyone gathered in Las Vegas for the Duran-Hearns match, the WBC light-middleweight title on the line. I was set to do the broadcast, but almost didn’t make the trip, with Juanita’s delivery date only about a week away. I left Maryland two days before the fight, and was asleep when the phone rang in the middle of the night. Juanita was in labor. I couldn’t get a flight out of Vegas till six A.M., and ended up missing my son’s birth by one stinking hour. I’ve felt awful about it ever since.