Out of uniform and back in civilian life, Sugar had to redeem his standing both as a citizen and as a top contender for the welterweight title. He was being branded a deserter and less than patriotic in some newspaper columns because of his failure to stay with his unit when it was shipped abroad. It would take years before the jeers on this matter subsided, though he had been honorably discharged. The path was equally difficult in his pursuit of a title shot. Jacobs and other major promoters were not impressed by his six consecutive victories. Each time he requested a title fight he was told that he could make more money without the crown because he’d get more fights. But Sugar insisted that it was no longer about the money so much as it was about fame, glory, and international acclaim. He wanted to be known, like Louis, all over the world.
Promoters used a number of excuses as to why they couldn’t arrange a championship fight for Sugar, often citing how difficult he was at the bargaining table. They felt that he was hard enough to bargain with while a challenger. “Just think what he’d be like if he were the champ,” they asserted. It was a proposition that few promoters, including Jacobs, were interested in encountering. Plead as he might, there was no title shot in the foreseeable future, Sugar was told repeatedly. Rather there were journeymen pugs such as the likable George Costner, whom Sugar kayoed in the first round February 14, 1945, in Chicago. “We attended a large celebration after the fight that was held in the cabaret room of one of the large hotels,” Edna Mae recalled. “Costner and his handlers were invited guests also. Costner, whose nickname was also Sugar, came over to our table and congratulated Sugar on his victory and asked if Sugar would allow him to dance with me. Sugar then asked, ‘Honey, will you dance with this fellow so that we both can teach him some lessons in the same night.’”
Althea Gibson was another apt student of their so-called lessons. She was a teenage string bean of a tennis player when she became associated with Edna Mae and Sugar just after World War II. Both strongly encouraged her to pursue her development on the court by studying with a reputable coach down South. They also helped Althea in her musical aspirations, which she would pursue professionally after vanquishing whatever opponent was unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of one of her sizzling serves. “Edna Mae and Ray were kind to me in lots of ways. They seemed to understand that I needed a whole lot of help,” Althea recounted in her memoir. “I used to love to be with them. They had such nice things. Sometimes they would even let me practice driving one of their fancy cars, even though I didn’t have a license. I think it gave Ray a kick to see how much fun I got out of it.” Once, when Althea wanted to buy a saxophone, Sugar told her to seek the advice of a musician friend before she bought one. She found one at a pawnshop for a hundred and twenty-five dollars, and Sugar gave her the money to purchase it. “I’ve never forgotten it,” she enthused. “I still have the sax, although I haven’t tried to play it in a long time—which is a break for the neighbors. They’re better off when I sing. I hope.”1
Edna Mae recalls how Sugar became aware of Gibson’s all-around athletic skills. There was a time in the early forties when Sugar used to take groups of children to the bowling lanes in the Bronx. “They swarmed all over Sugar when the word got out that he was on his way to the bowling alleys,” she recorded in her notes. “Some of them were pretty good, and when they beat Sugar he had to pay for the game and refreshments. One of the young women that we met there was relentless in her efforts to beat Sugar, and he became fascinated by her skill and dedication. She really endeared herself to him and he became concerned about her being in the bowling alley at any hour that he’d show up and he finally asked her if she attended school. She told him that she’d lost interest in school. He worried her so much about continuing her education that she told him that she’d be willing to go back if he bought her a saxophone.
“Sugar shopped around the music stores with a musician friend of his and they selected a horn for her, and per their agreement, she was shipped off to school. She was a good student and kept Sugar and me abreast of her progress.”
Looming before Sugar was another major hurdle—another certain, bloody showdown with the Bronx Bull, slated for February 23, 1945, in New York City. But this “showdown,” like their second one later that year on September 26 in Chicago, turned out to be more illusion than real, as Sugar easily beat LaMotta on both dates.
Meanwhile, Edna Mae and Sugar, who had by now changed his hairstyle from the high-peaked pompadour to the signature conk, had, at least temporarily, patched up their marriage and were breezing along with the postwar euphoria, settling comfortably once more into the fabric of Harlem. As per Bing Crosby’s top song of the year, the two were “accentuating the positive” things between them, enjoying the good life with close friends and smooching at the Alhambra Theater on Seventh Avenue, especially when a Charles Boyer or Ray Milland film was featured. They were both hopeless romantics, and all of the dreams they shared were gradually coming true.
Things were also relatively smooth for Sugar’s partner, Joe Louis, and his ex-wife, Marva. Louis owed her $25,000 in back alimony, but rather than settling outright, she agreed to a contractual arrangement that made her one of his comanagers. Given Louis’s indebtedness, she believed the payoff would be far better that way. When the Brown Bomber knocked out Billy Conn at Yankee Stadium in June 1946, his purse was $625,000. After paying his obligations, he was able to bank $70,000. Of course, Marva got her percentage as well. Their amity was of such magnitude that they decided to remarry in July. “Marva rationalized her decision by explaining that during their divorce she had not met any man as interesting as her ex-husband. Unfortunately, their second marriage was destined to be an instant replay of their first.”2
By the fall of 1946, Sugar was not in the best of moods. He was getting tired of the on-and-off-again discussions about a possible championship bout. Talking over the topsy-turvy developments with Edna Mae often cooled him down; otherwise, he was increasingly bitter and ready to take his disgust out on just about anyone.
Though Sugar had racked up an impressive number of victories against top contenders, one mishap after another prevented him from getting a chance to fight for the welterweight title, which by now was held by Marty Servo. After Servo lost to Rocky Graziano in a nontitle fight, Sugar was signed to fight Servo for the crown. Sugar was in training at Greenwood Lake one day when he was approached by two seedy-looking men who wanted a word with him. They offered him twenty-five thousand dollars if he wouldn’t fight Servo. Sugar thought they were out of their minds. “Man, all I want to do in the world is fight Servo,” he told them.3 They persisted, asking him not to make the weight requirement. At last, Sugar told them to get out of his sight. Nothing was going to stop him from taking on Servo, he told them. But something did intervene. While in training, Servo’s damaged nose was busted further by a sparring mate, and the fight was postponed. The injury was enough to force his retirement.
Fortunately for Sugar, the boxing commission insisted that another challenger be found to fight Sugar, with the victor claiming the vacant title. That eventful day finally came on December 20, 1946, when Tommy Bell arrived at the Garden to challenge Sugar. Physically, Sugar and Bell were almost mirror images of each other with their taut, slender bodies. And Bell, too, had been waiting for an opportunity to showcase his skills in a championship bout. Sugar was confident he could take him, since he had done so in an earlier fight in Cleveland in January 1945. Sugar appeared sluggish during the first seven rounds, as if he were sleepwalking.
But he was rudely awakened in the eighth when Bell’s left hook found the mark and flattened him. “Twice Bell ripped Robinson with staggering shots, even dropping him to one knee once,” Bob Roth reported in the Youngstown Business-Journal. The punches were coming so fast that even radio broadcaster Don Dunphy, with his quick tongue, was having trouble keeping up with the pace of the fight, and Bill Corum, who provided color, was unable to use his droll expression about “it not being a very interesting round.”
“But Robinson wasn’t recognized as the best-ever without reason,” Roth continued. “As the fight got tougher, so did Robinson. From the 12th round on he was a combination machine. When the bell ended round fifteen, a Garden crowd of more than 18,000 stood saluting both fighters. A decision gave Robinson the championship he had long coveted.”4
“I was at that fight,” recalled Langley Waller, who often printed Sugar’s posters and flyers. “And after Bell knocked him down, that’s when Gainford, his trainer, began telling Sugar Ray to slow down, take it easy, and let the fight come to him. Sugar was good about listening to his cornermen, and with Bell he made no more mistakes.”
Though it was a championship fight, Sugar didn’t earn as much money as he would have against a top white contender, despite his singular, take-no-prisoners style of brinkmanship in negotiating a contract. David Remnick noted as much in his book on Ali, King of the World. “Sugar Ray Robinson fought one white after another—Bobo Olson, Paul Pender, Gene Fullmer, Jake LaMotta, Carmen Basilio; the promoters rarely offered remotely the same money for bouts against equally tough black challengers,” he asserted, having made the same point in Ali’s case.
For the first time, Sugar held a championship, the welterweight title, and it came at the same time Louis was heavyweight champ (an eventuality that seemed quite probable, since Louis held the belt for twelve years, from 1937 to 1949). Wearing the crown, however, didn’t bring all the things Sugar desired.
A few months before the fight with Bell, Sugar had scouted Harlem for investment property, including several buildings on Seventh Avenue, next to the Hotel Theresa. One of the buildings was terribly dilapidated, and it was here he wanted his centerpiece, a café. The contractor had promised him that the work would be finished by the time he won the title, that his “throne room” would be ready to accommodate the champion. But there were delays in getting the wood and paneling that Sugar had specifically requested. He had hired Vertner Tandy, one of the best architects in the city and the designer of many of the luxury buildings in Harlem, but the work crew had fallen behind schedule. Even worse, he was told the work might not be finished until Christmas Eve. He had invested nearly a hundred thousand dollars in purchasing the site of the café and the two flats next to it, with an additional ten thousand for renovations.
“About two hours after I won the title, I drove up outside my café,” Sugar recounted. “Inside, the workmen were installing the lights behind the bar. I had them working almost around the clock to finish it by Christmas Eve.” One of the workmen told him the lights were working. “Hey, champ,” the workman called to Sugar, “the sign’s hooked up. Turn on the sign. It lights up like Coney Island.” And it did. The neon glow from Sugar Ray’s lit up the avenue. Unlike Jack Dempsey’s Restaurant downtown and Joe Louis’s ill-fated restaurant on 125th Street, Sugar had kept his café to a modest size. He wanted an intimate spot, with patrons elbowing each other for space. “The best advertising is to keep the place packed,” he often explained.
Edna Mae was by his side when the neon lights bathed the street, and some of the glow fell on them as they embraced, then concocted a toast from a couple of Cokes and paper cups. For several hours they celebrated the new café, and Sugar admitted, “It was one of the nicest celebrations I’ve ever had.”5
As the new champ, Sugar wasn’t one to rest on his laurels. He eagerly followed Gainford’s advice—keep busy, to keep sharp. Edna Mae was keeping busy too, overseeing their property and its development, now and then supervising the workers. Their new enterprise was the talk of the town. Unlike so many stars who had emerged from Harlem, Sugar was looking for ways to give back to the community, and at the same time make a little more money. “Eventually, Sugar ran a number of businesses,” Edna Mae explained. “There was his café, a dry cleaners, and the Golden Glovers barbershop. All of them were right next to each other and took up the entire west side of Seventh Avenue between 124th and 123rd Streets. The last storefront was to be ‘Edna Mae’s Lingerie Shoppe’ and was on the corner of 124th and Seventh Avenue. Sugar’s ownership continued around the corner onto 124th Street for one more building. One of those tenants made a hair straightener and ran his business in his apartment, which he made into his laboratory and his office.”
Edna Mae was made a full partner in the business, but Sugar kept her in the dark about most of his transactions. It would prove a mistake, given her eye for details and bookkeeping abilities. She kept copious notes and accurate records of each fight, the gate receipts, expenditures, and the percentages for each of Sugar’s cornermen, handlers, and sparring partners. Her records showed, for example, that in February 1945, when Sugar fought LaMotta and won a unanimous decision, they earned $93,100. It was one of Sugar’s largest paydays to date. (Later he would earn $250,000 from his two fights with Randy Turpin and a consolation payoff of $150,000 from his fight with Joey Maxim.) According to her records, their personal expenses for the LaMotta fight were $672.48, Gainford received $2,500, and for their work on fight night six handlers divvied up $750. An inveterate collector, Edna Mae saved everything: bills, ticket stubs, matches, programs, posters, photos, and nearly every item on which her husband’s name or face appeared. In the end, she saved everything—but could she save their marriage, which, even as they celebrated their new businesses, was on shaky ground?