But banks weren't in the habit of lending money to boxers, especially black amateur boxers. So, following the business model set by Joe Frazier's original Cloverlay group, Trainer went to a group of friends and clients to grubstake Ray, telling them, "Don't lend him any more than you can afford to lose. This is a fun thing. If you lose the money, it's like going to the racetrack." Twenty-one of them kicked in $1,000 each to form Ray Leonard Inc. Four months later they all got their money back—plus interest of $40, which one of them neglected to report as income, prompting the Internal Revenue Service to audit his tax return.
This was also about the time Trainer decided Ray needed a public relations man and recommended Charlie Brotman, who was known around the Washington, D.C., area as "Mr. Sports." It's also the point in the story when Ray Leonard and I became an "item."
Following Trainer's suggestion, Janks and Ray, along with Ray's father, visited Brotman at his office. After telling Brotman, "I'm ready to do what I've got to do," Ray asked what to do. Charlie, who had handled the PR for the local Golden Gloves and Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) tournaments—and had publicized Ray as the drawing card to sell tickets for the events—told them that Ray "needed a manager, a trainer, and a cutman." "But who?" they asked. Again Charlie came up with an answer, sort of a three-part answer: Eddie Futch, Gil Clancy, or yours truly. The threesome then told Charlie to go ahead and contact the three names and see which one he would recommend. With that, Brotman drew up a questionnaire and called all three of the potential managers/trainers. His call to me went something like this: "Sugar Ray Leonard is considering going professional ..." and then he rattled off a series of questions like, "Where would he train?" "Where would his home base be?" "What opponent should he fight first?" "Could you help publicize Ray?" I must have given the right answers for somehow, someway, Brotman's recommendation as to who, as he put it, "could do the most good for Sugar Ray, both in and out of the ring," was, TA-DA, Angelo Dundee.
The next thing I knew, there was someone named Mike Trainer on the phone. I didn't know Mike Trainer from Adam—never heard of him, never met him, never talked to him. But there he was explaining to me that he was Leonard's lawyer and that he had formed a corporation to look after Leonard's potential earnings and was looking for a manager for Sugar Ray. I wasn't sure if he was asking me if I wanted to handle Leonard or not, so I let him go on without asking. Trainer finally got around to asking me if I was interested. Sure, I was interested. I knew the kid and liked him; he had won me over with his first hello. Besides, the kid, from what I had seen in the Olympics, was lavishly talented. What was not to like? We discussed my involvement, and Trainer sent me a copy of a proposed six-year contract to review to act as Ray's personal representative, boxing advisor, and manager. I was to receive 15 percent of Leonard's boxing earnings.
Satisfied with the terms, I flew to Washington to sign the contract. Trainer personally picked me up at the airport and took me immediately to a press conference to announce my signing on as Sugar Ray's manager. There was little doubt that my association with Muhammad Ali and my list of champions gave Sugar Ray instant credibility. My addition to the team was what one of my writer friends told me looked like "the bread they had cast upon the waters would come back bread pudding covered with cream." And Ray called me "the missing piece of the puzzle."
Having signed on as manager, my first job was to get a close look at my fighter. To get to know Ray better and evaluate his skills, I asked that Ray come down to the 5th Street Gym in Miami with Janks Morton and Dave Jacobs, his trainer from his amateur days.
How do I evaluate a boxer's skills in a gym situation? I watch him spar and then take notes, normally on the back of any handy old envelope or piece of paper available, breaking down a fighter's style the way an English teacher would a sentence. My notes usually include observations on the boxer's hand movement, ability to slide, balance, jab, and so on. With Ray there were very few such notes. From what I saw, he had an awful lot to offer—great balance, lightning reflexes, and a big punch.
But he needed to be nursed along. After all, like all amateur fighters he had never fought more than three rounds. So my first job was to build up his stamina. After stamina-building exercises, Ray underwent long sessions of sparring and shadowboxing. I hardly touched his style, it was near perfect. What I did was tweak it a little, teaching him to get down on his punches a little more so that he punched rather than slapped, as well as showing him angles and other subtleties that would allow him to translate those skills into professional success.
My next job was to make matches for Ray that would provide him with on-the-job training. Matchmaking is not like spinning the wheel on "Wheel of Fortune" and coming up with a match/opponent. Nor was it spoon-feeding him fighters with toe tags from the local cemetery, as many managers do to build up their fighters' early careers. No, you've got to make the right matches, matching your fighter with guys he can learn from, not only to increase your fighter's experience but also so you can gauge what your fighter's got. By constantly raising the bar on your fighter's training wheels, you increase the odds of his success and his chances of moving up in competition. Raising the bar also gives you an opportunity to see how high his ceiling is. You've got to be very careful you don't overstep your kid's talent. Don't try before he's ready. This happens to a lot of fighters—kids are called upon to show their talent before they're ready for the big time, and they can't handle it. You've got to put your fighter in the best possible matchups for him, ones he'll learn from. And, needless to say, the less risky, the better.
Take Gene Tunney, for example, a self-taught boxer who learned as he went along. He improved by applying what he picked up from past opponents. Another who learned on the job was Tony Canzoneri who waded through a grueling schedule with few milk-fed opponents and by the time he won the lightweight title at the unripe age of twenty-two, he was a well-seasoned veteran of eighty-three pro battles.
You can also learn as much from failures as from small triumphs. Floyd Patterson's fight with Joey Maxim is an example. Floyd was undefeated in his first thirteen fights. Thinking Floyd was ready for better opponents, manager Cus D'Amato put him in with former light-heavyweight champ Joey Maxim, then in his 105th fight. Maxim, one of those cuties who could box your ears off, took Floyd to school, winning an eight-round decision. But D'Amato thought it was a good loss, one he called a great learning experience. "That's why I matched him with Maxim," D'Amato said.
On the other hand, matchmaking is also the quasi-science of avoiding those fights that serve no purpose or are counterproductive. One bout that served absolutely no purpose was Rocky Marciano's fight with Lee Savold. In his thirty-ninth fight, coming right after his destruction of Joe Louis, Marciano was so busy trying to get his thirty-fourth knockout he didn't learn a thing. He simply looked like a wild young man throwing leather to the winds. And although he came away with the win, one writer was moved to write, "You can't teach a fellow to fight if he isn't forced to learn in the ring."
There was also another problem in finding the right matches for Ray. Ray's reputation was so awesome that managers of other preliminary fighters nearly fell all over themselves running away from any suggestion they match their fighters against him. Others tried to overmatch him with far more seasoned fighters.
Nevertheless, offers came in. Sometimes directly to me, sometimes to Trainer—especially those fights around the Washington, D.C., area. I checked out every potential opponent. Those I hadn't seen personally, I checked out with others who knew the style and quality of the fighters whose names were submitted. We had to find the right opponent for his debut, one who was not so bad, not so good; one who could put up a good fight—not too good, mind you—and still give Ray a chance to learn how to pace himself through six rounds and be comfortable in front of a large crowd. You see, you learn from doing. You learn from the fights. All the training in the world is not like being in a fight—the actual combat, the crowd, learning how to deal with people, everything.
I finally found what looked like the perfect opponent for Ray's first fight: Luis "The Bull" Vega, a welterweight out of Allentown, Pennsylvania. I say "looked like" because, although I had never seen him, his record was perfect for Ray, fourteen total bouts with seven wins, five losses, and two draws. He had three knockouts and had never been KO'd. But when I finally saw him on the day of the fight, I was embarrassed. He was so small that it was almost a guarantee he would never hear the words "Jump Ball" in his lifetime. So I made him wear a sombrero at the weigh-in and stand on the scale on his tiptoes. Meanwhile Ray crouched over so the two wouldn't look like a replica of the 1939 World's Fair symbol.
The long and short of it was that Ray won his debut in convincing fashion in front of a sellout crowd at the Baltimore Civic Center and a national TV audience. We were off and running.
When I first entered boxing way back when, television was no big deal. Back then fighters got $4,000 or so for fighting on TV. Then the TV camera changed our entire business, making faces as recognizable as those seen in the mirror every morning. A boxer's earning power has become greater because the public knows the face. Just ask Muhammad. He captured the TV cameras and captivated the TV audience. And in so doing reaped the benefits, earning millions.
The same thing happened to Sugar Ray Leonard. Everyone knew Ray Leonard, thanks to ABC and Howard Cosell. The question was now: how best to exploit it?
Ray was one of the two Olympic gold medal winners ABC had embraced with their cameras, the other being Howard Davis Jr., the lightweight medalist and winner of the Val Barker Award as the outstanding boxer in the Montreal Games. Now CBS-TV, looking to get the jump on ABC and beat them at their own game, sought to sign both to long-term contracts. Unable to decide which to sign first, they turned to their in-house boxing consultant, Gil Clancy, to find out which of the two he preferred. Clancy reportedly said, "I like Davis. He's the better fighter, and Leonard's got bad hands." Nevertheless, CBS signed both. Davis was signed to fight six times over the next year and eight months, receiving $40,000 for a six-rounder, $50,000 for an eight-rounder, and $200,000 for a ten-rounder if Davis supplied the opponent. (He would earn $165,000 for a ten-rounder if CBS had to dig up a suitable victim.) Ray received $40,000 for his first bout, his six-rounder with Vega.
The Vega bout, however, was a one-time thing with CBS as ABC stepped in to sign Ray just as Ray was on the threshold of signing a long-term contract with CBS. Charlie Brotman, who was in on the negotiations, told me how that happened. According to Charlie, CBS had contracted Ray to do the color on a fight they televised from Puerto Rico, but the contract also gave them a right of first refusal for his first pro fight. After Mike Trainer had negotiated that first-fight contract, Charlie asked Trainer if he had checked with anybody else to see what the going price was. Told no by Trainer, Charlie, thinking it was in Ray's best interest to check, called Howard Cosell. Cosell, like everyone else in the industry, said he "was under the impression Ray was committed to CBS." When told by Charlie it was only for his first fight, Cosell said he'd talk with Jim Spence in the sports department and get back to Charlie.
Charlie and Trainer had scheduled a meeting with CBS to sign a long-term contract at noon, but Spence called at the behest of Cosell and told them to come up to ABC before going over to the one-eyed network to "see if we can talk." So the two members of Leonard's brain trust flew up to meet with Spence and Cosell. Spence's first question was, "What will it take?" Charlie threw out a number saying, "Oh, $100,000," and Spence quickly agreed. At that point, again according to Brotman, Trainer and Brotman asked to be excused and went to the men's room where, in Charlie's words, "It was like the popping of champagne bottles, both of us laughing hysterically." They then went back and signed, figuring they had driven a good deal. After all, they reasoned, CBS had offered less than one-half of that for Leonard's fight with Vega. Later, when they called Barry Frank over at CBS to tell them what they had done, Frank was livid and said, "Do you know what you've done? We would have gone higher than $100,000."
Ray was never meant to be a bit player. His 100,000-watt smile and enormous likeability coupled with his extraordinary boxing skills tabbed him as boxing's coming superstar. Moreover, he wore the name of one of boxing's all-time greats: Sugar Ray Robinson. That name had been given to Robinson by a sportswriter who, watching him, said, "He's sweet." And his manager had filled in the blank, saying, "as sweet as sugar." And Robinson protected the name in the face of other "Sugars," as if he had a copyright on it. One time, so the story goes, when Robinson faced another of the pretenders to the "Sugar" crown, George "Sugar" Costner, he reputedly told Costner during the prefight instructions, "Now I'll show you who's the real Sugar." Robinson proved his point by laying out Costner in one round. Afterward Robinson chided the artificial "Sugar" with, "Now go out and earn yourself the name."
But now Robinson accepted his new namesake, Ray Leonard, saying, "I'm gratified he's using my name. I think it's great when kids think enough of you to use your name."
And so the fighter first named after Ray Charles was now named after Ray Robinson. In an ironic twist, it just so happened that Ray Charles's real name was Ray Charles Robinson. He had dropped his surname because he was being confused in the public's mind with the fighter.
By February 1978 Sugar Ray had graduated to eight-round bouts, beating Rocky Ramon in his sixth fight. I was pleased with how quickly Ray was coming along and knew that within a couple of months he would be ready to make the big jump into ten-round contests. Still, I was in no hurry. I thought it better to let Ray take a year longer to reach his goal than move him up into longer bouts and tougher opposition too quickly. After all, it had taken Muhammad four years before he won the title. It's always been my belief that it's not who you are, but what you can become that counts. And now I honestly thought that Ray would someday become champion. But in time.
When you're in the glass slipper business, hoping against hope your next Cinderella fulfills his promise, there's one word you avoid like the plague, the word great. It's a word too easily tossed around and not often enough earned. But with each passing fight Ray began leaving his calling card for future greatness. His laser-like punches had clinical precision. His balance was such he could franchise it, his center of gravity as near perfect as any fighter I'd ever seen. And he could feint any opponent out of his jockstrap. Even Sugar Ray Robinson sat up and took notice of his namesake, saying, "He's learning every time he fights. He's putting it altogether well. He's not great yet. But I know one thing ... he wins."
It was now time to up the level of competition, to match Ray against some of the first-tier fighters in the welterweight division in ten-rounders. Not just schedule-fillers, mind you, but higher and higher stepping-stones to see just how far his skills would take him. When you have a young talent, the idea is to bring him along gradually to make him learn his profession without getting destroyed. A lot of guys take the wrong kind of opponents. You're not picking stiffs, you're picking guys to teach your fighter. You're teaching him how to handle a tall guy, how to handle a short guy, how to handle a quick guy, how to handle a tough guy. To be a champion, you've got to be able to handle all sizes and shapes.
Now matchmaking is always a risk-benefit process. Some matchmakers overestimate the risk; others underestimate it and take the risk. Throughout my long career I've been able to calculate the risk. By Ray's eleventh fight, I had decided to match Ray with more than the usual suspects, instead matching him against the likes of Rafael Rodriguez, Dick Ecklund, Floyd Mayweather Sr., Randy Shields, Johnny Gant, Fernand Marcotte, and Adolfo Viruet, each a rung on Sugar Ray's ladder to the top. All tough fighters, they had a cumulative record of 171 wins in 208 fights for a winning percentage of .822, and each presented some sort of risk for Ray. But Ray, continuing to grow both professionally and personally with every fight, came through this welterweight baptismal of firepower with flying colors, winning all seven, four by knockout.
As Ray's number of wins cont
inued to grow, so too did his fame, as evidenced by his drawing power. Everywhere he fought he drew record numbers. In his pro debut against Vega, 10,170 jammed into Baltimore's Civic Center even though the fight was on TV. His third fight against Vinnie DeBarrows drew the largest fight crowd in the history of Hartford. And a record crowd of 19,243 jammed into Landover Capital Centre in Maryland to see him fight Johnny Gant in his eighteenth fight, breaking the record set in Ali's defense against Jimmy Young two years before. Ray's star was continuing to rise, and we needed to keep it going with more star turns against other worthy opponents.
Finding worthy opponents is not exactly like ordering salami. You can't order it by the pound, in this case 147 pounds, you have to search it out. After Ray had run through most of the top-notch welterweights, I had to find someone Ray could fight so that he would continue to develop his talents and continue his march to the welterweight title.
There was talk of Sugar Ray meeting Tommy Hearns, who was on a parallel path with Ray. Up to this point, through his first twenty fights, I had scheduled each of Ray's fights by design, each when he was ready and the time was right. But I didn't think the timing was right for a fight with Tommy. Not now, anyway. Talking with Emanuel Steward, Hearns's manager, I told him, "It's too early, wait till the time is right ... wait till it builds up. Why now for a little bit of money, when later mucho dinero?" But I knew that somewhere down the line it would happen.
With Ray having fought almost on a once-a-month basis, I wanted to fill in his boxing card so that he stayed busy on his way to a bout with World Boxing Council (WBC) titlist Wilfred Benitez. But we were fast running out of eligible candidates. Shopping around, I finally came up with someone I thought was right for Ray: Marcos Geraldo.
From what I had heard Geraldo was one tough sucker, a middleweight in welterweight clothing who was the Mexican and California middleweight champion and possessed an imposing record of forty-one wins and twenty-three knockouts. However, according to my sources, he had a suspect chin—what we call in the business a "china chin"—having been knocked out eight times, five times in the first round. Studying his record and his style like a scientist would a specimen and overcoming the protests of others in Leonard's camp, I thought it was time to raise the bar even higher and see how Ray would do against a bigger, stronger opponent.
My View from the Corner Page 28
