Sugar and Edna Mae returned to Harlem, and the fans smothered them with praise and adoration, as ever. The café was jammed each night with well-wishers, all of them looking for a chance to toast and touch the champ. But behind Sugar’s radiant smile was the memory of the purse-snatching by the IRS; he needed another title bout—or something that would bring in money. That “something” came within a few days, when the dancer/actor Gene Kelly called him to appear on his TV show. “I was delighted, and asked Ray to please accept it,” Edna Mae related. “He went down to his office in Harlem to talk privately with Mr. Kelly. Sugar asked for so much money that Mr. Kelly decided he could manage without him.”
Edna Mae was furious that Sugar had priced himself out of an opportunity to show his versatility and to appear with one of the greatest dancers in the country. She sprang to action to see what could be done to repair the situation. After she talked to both Kelly and Sugar, a lower price was agreed on. “I rehearsed him at home, showed him some great stage tricks that charm and delight audiences. Sugar remembered them all and nearly stole the show; he was sensational. Mr. Kelly called me and thanked me for helping him. I truly was helping my champion. We needed Mr. Kelly, not vice versa.”
Another Gene was on Sugar’s agenda for January 2, 1957, at the Garden: Gene Fullmer. Fullmer, a stocky Mormon from Utah, was a thick-necked battler who didn’t know the meaning of retreat. The fight had originally been scheduled for sometime in December, but Sugar had developed a virus. The Fullmer camp saw it as just another instance of Sugar’s delaying tactics.
When the match finally got under way, Edna Mae, as usual, had a ringside seat. “Ray appeared to lose stamina in the later rounds as Fullmer never stopped holding on so closely that it was impossible for Sugar to deliver effective blows. He’d hug and then punch Ray all over his head and shoulders. Fans were screaming and shouting at the referee (Ruby Goldstein) to break them apart, but he never did. In the last round Sugar came out looking so calm and in control that we began to hope that Sugar had won. We were wrong.”
Roscoe Bennett, a sportswriter for the Grand Rapids Press, captured the feelings of those who believed that Goldstein had mishandled the bout by allowing Fullmer to get away with so many illegal punches. “They point to the rabbit punches, the wild flailings to the back of the head and the neck, and the persistent clinching that the brawl was one of the most disappointing of the season. Boxing rules decree that only punches to the front and side of the body are legitimate blows. Fullmer landed more punches to Sugar Ray’s back than he did to the front and side of the body, two to one.”1
“That night I was in the ring but Ray Robinson wasn’t,” Sugar lamented after losing his middleweight belt to Fullmer. He said that he was thrown off his game by Fullmer’s bullying style, which bore all the trademarks of that of a barroom brawler. “I even let him get me against the ropes, something I seldom did…One of the ropes even broke, and I almost fell out of the ring. It wasn’t my night.” Though Sugar lost the fifteen-round decision, the IRS at least let him hang on to the $140,000 purse, $50,000 of which was personally his. After expenses, it would be more than enough to set aside for a few weeks of fun with his new lover from California, a woman whose presence would threaten his marriage.
Edna Mae was wise to Sugar’s new affair. “I don’t know if she knew that she wasn’t the only one that I shared him with,” she asserted, “but somehow those women seldom rocked the boat.” This woman, however, seemed to be different.
Even Ray II witnessed his father’s indiscretions. “My father would take me with him to various places where he hung out,” he remembered. “When he wasn’t in training he spent a lot of time with other civic leaders and businessmen such as Joseph Wells; Ed Smalls, who owned Smalls’ Paradise; Red Randolph, owner of the Shalimar, just across the street from Dad’s businesses; and underworld types like Bumpy Johnson. Sometimes he would drop me off with Bundini (Brown) at the Apollo or leave me in the lobby of the Theresa Hotel when Charlie Rangel was the desk clerk, while he went out and checked his ‘traps,’ his various female partners.”
There had been so many dalliances, Edna Mae confessed, that after a while she became inured, feeling that they came with the territory, were simply a hazard of his celebrity. “There were so many of them and just one me,” she said. “He always changed them. Of course, they had fun and enjoyed the good times and none of the bad, but somehow Sugar always tired of them and came home. I now changed my tactics. I really gave him lots of space.”
And Sugar would need all the space he could get as he prepared for a title rematch with the bull-like Fullmer, scheduled for that spring in Chicago, several months after their first encounter at the Garden in January. The oddsmakers had Fullmer at three to one to retain his championship over the aging Sugar, who would turn thirty-six two days after the May 1 bout. The majority of sportswriters agreed that Sugar was five years past his prime and on his way to a slaughter.
Edna Mae was of a similar mind, and perhaps that is why she doubled her prayer sessions with Father Lang, with whom she had stayed in touch, and even added another minister to the fold to ensure that her prayers were answered. When she wasn’t praying she was attending to Ray II, who had come down with chicken pox, which meant he had to be quarantined and kept away from his father. This had to be accomplished along with her usual duties, particularly her task of preparing Sugar’s meals. On the night of the fight, Edna Mae showed up at the arena with her hair dyed freshly blonde, and assumed her ringside seat in plain view of her husband’s corner. If Sugar noticed her new hairstyle, he never registered it—Fullmer had his full attention, and he knew it would take the full arsenal of his skills and concentration to defeat the mauler.
Fullmer took the first three rounds, but Sugar rallied in the fourth. In the fifth round, Fullmer advanced across the ring with his right hand to his chest, like Boris Karloff as The Mummy. Sugar sensed the opening he had been looking for. Without hesitation he set his feet, stepped a bit to the side, and aimed a left hook to Fullmer’s exposed jaw. It was a perfect punch from a nearly flawless fighter, and Fullmer never knew what hit him. “I don’t know anything about that punch,” Fullmer told reporters later, “except I watched it on movies a couple of times.”
Edna Mae remembered much better: “He astonished that crowd of fourteen thousand, seven hundred and fifty-seven spectators by knocking out Fullmer in one minute and twenty-seven seconds of the fifth round…After the referee had completed the count, Fullmer struggled to rise but needed the referee’s help. He said later that he did not remember hearing the count. Also he said that he could not remember ever being hit harder.” Seated near Edna Mae was Joe Louis, and the two of them rejoiced in the victory.
Sugar was so elated that he effusively thanked everybody who had ever believed in him, thanking them for their prayers and for keeping their faith in him. Special kudos were expressed for Father Lang and Edna Mae, and he rewarded his platinum blonde wife with a beautiful white mink stole, which she added to a collection of expensive fur coats that was constantly growing larger, despite their problems with the IRS and the decline in the profitability of their businesses. The Fullmer victory only whetted the appetite of boxing fans, who now hungered for a match between Sugar and the former onion farmer Carmen Basilio, then a leading contender.
Sugar, his face unmarked, was given a passel of telegrams from his fans after stopping Fullmer, but the most significant papers in his hands were the two checks he received—one for $37,479 from the gate receipts, one for $30,000 for the television rights. Fullmer received equal payments. If it’s true that money breeds more money, Sugar’s stash proved it, because soon offers were pouring in for him to make even more on future bouts. Despite their differences, Jim Norris, president of the IBC, was already talking to Sugar about a title fight against Basilio, the welterweight champion. “That fight could do at least three-quarters of a million in Yankee Stadium,” Norris surmised. “I’m going to try to make it as soon as I can.” On the same day, Sugar got a call from promoter Jimmy Dundee in San Francisco, who offered Sugar one hundred thousand dollars to defend his title against the winner of the Chico Vejar–Joey Giambra fight on May 14. Then, of course, there was a possible return match with Fullmer. But even before he could mull over the good fortune awaiting him, the federal government stepped into the mix.2
A day after the fight, Sugar got an early birthday present from the IRS—the Feds had placed a $23,000 lien on Robinson’s purse after his victory over Fullmer. This amount, the government charged, was the claim against Sugar for back income taxes. Edna Mae’s aunt Blanche told the press that Sugar was not to blame for the mismanagement of his personal and business financial affairs. He “was very young when he started these businesses in Harlem in 1945,” she told a reporter at the New York Times. “He had confidence in his hired help and managers, but they just lacked the qualities to run the businesses properly.” She explained that things got out of hand during his tour of Europe in 1954, and that shortly thereafter members of the family, including Edna Mae, took over those responsibilities. There was nothing exactly dishonest about the employees, she continued, putting a press agent’s spin on the matter, and added that Sugar Ray Robinson’s Harlem Enterprises was once again “stable.”3