One Punch from the Promised Land

by John Florio

  To his credit, Leon often said the right things, telling the world he was just Leon, a product of north St. Louis—living proof that the American dream was possible.

  “When I came out of the Marines and turned pro, it was life and death for me,” he told Pat Putnam of Sports Illustrated. “If I didn’t make it, I knew what I had to go back to, what was waiting for me. I came from poorness and I don’t want to go back to poorness.”

  Spoken like a true champion, only it rang hollow. Within days of winning the title, Leon had assembled a full-blown entourage. Unlike other fighters who hired friends and relatives to accompany them around town—a practice started by Sugar Ray Robinson in the late 1940s—Leon barely knew his entourage. His payroll included two press agents, four trainers, three lawyers, a manager, an accountant, a valet, a personal physician, two promoters, a sparring partner, and a 247-pound bodyguard with a shaved head named Lawrence Tureaud, who preferred to be called Mr. T.

  The spending didn’t stop there. It didn’t stop anywhere. Leon shelled out $45,000 on a white six-door Lincoln Continental limousine complete with color TV, bar, phone, and stereo; $18,000 on a Cadillac Seville to go along with the two-and-a-half-carat diamond ring he’d given Nova; $75,000 on a house in Detroit for him and Nova; and an undisclosed sum on a home in Des Moines for his mother-in-law. He also outfitted himself with a new wardrobe that included a pair of black and white mink coats, each with a matching mink hat.

  It was evident that Leon had no plans to become any kind of role model. Maybe he didn’t know how. Or maybe he didn’t want the responsibility. More likely, he never even considered it. The one thing that’s certain is that ghetto culture had attached itself to his DNA.

  Emanuel Steward was no stranger to poverty himself, having grown up the son of a coal miner. He was also no stranger to the plight of boxers.

  “[Leon] moved across the street from where I live in Detroit,” Steward told the authors in 2011 (Steward died unexpectedly the following year.). “He hooked up with Ed Bell, a flamboyant lawyer. And so Bell enticed him to move to Detroit, where he could have more control over him. So [Leon] gets a beautiful house in a neighborhood called Rosedale Park, and a friend of mine invites me to go there for a party. I open up the door, it was just, to say it was off the hook was an understatement. They were doing some kind of train, everybody’s going through the whole house. Leon had his cowboy hat on, and a couple of guys are yelling, ‘C’mon, Coach, get on!’ So I get on with ’em. I see a football player from Pittsburgh, and he’s got a game the next day. It was unbelievable.

  “That was the first time I got to see Leon personally. The whole house was rocking. When he would have parties, everybody’s house on the block would be moving. You’d call him and tell him to turn the music down. [He’d ask,] ‘Is it loud?’

  “You gotta remember where he came from: the projects. He got started there early and it became part of his genetic makeup. Smoking weed, drinking beer. Some people outgrow it and are able to control it. He was never able to control it. He never did feel comfortable in a nice environment. He’s comfortable in a ghetto, low-income-type place. He has a low image of himself.”

  Michael Conforti, clinical psychologist and pop culture analyst, sees Leon’s transition from poor man to rich man as understandably difficult. “You’re gonna take somebody like a Leon Spinks and all that they’ve been through—the ghetto, the wars, the fights, the family stuff—and ask him to live like a rich man? It’s insane. And it’s really cruel. You’re saying to him, ‘Hey, here’s the keys to your Maserati. Here’s the keys to your beautiful home. Enjoy the good life, the rich life, the cultured life.’ Of course his response would be, ‘Hey, you fuckin’ with me? This is not my world. I got a big house, I can have more pimps, I can have more prostitutes, more dope and all that stuff.’ Like Pig-Pen you carry your field with you.”

  Professor and boxing writer Gerald Early says, “It takes a certain kind of mentality to be able to maintain yourself as champion and to be able to control your entourage—and control yourself. And Leon never seemed like he was in control of himself. In some respects, he got a genie and didn’t know how to deal with it.

  “Leon represented the kind of uncouth black guy from the ghetto. He brought to the fore the whole set of so-called pathological behaviors typically associated with inner-city black males. Leon couldn’t have been what white America wanted in a heavyweight champion even if they wanted Ali to be defeated.”

  According to Carlo Rotella, author of Cut Time: An Education at the Fights, “In the Seventies there were tons of models of black masculinity from the ghetto. If you look at popular culture, there’s Shaft, Superfly. There are a million versions of this character but Spinks, I think, embarrassed everybody. He was not Ali. He was emphatically not Ali. And he didn’t fit any of the other handy, available slots. And the one slot available was embarrassing to everybody.”

  Ali biographer Thomas Hauser says, “[Leon] didn’t know any better. He didn’t really understand what society thinks of as the responsibilities that come with being heavyweight champion of the world. Even if he understood those responsibilities, I’m not sure that he had the personal resources to carry them out.”

  In an interview with the Washington Post in 1978, Bob Arum said that Leon was the “distasteful product of a ghetto environment. He has all those ghetto speech patterns and there’s a lack of discipline about him. He sleeps late. He’s not too concerned with keeping appointments. He’s not all that quick when he talks. Whites are uneasy with him and so are middle-class blacks. They look at him—the champion—and all they see is a ghetto black that they’ve learned to shun, to fear.”

  According to Douglas Hartmann, author of Race, Culture and the Revolt of the Black Athlete, “In a lot of ways Leon was the stereotype that a lot of educated, more self-conscious black athletes were the most afraid of. [They were] trying to run from that. He wasn’t a figure that many people really wanted to associate with anymore—the almost cartoonish character who had no place in society outside of black culture, for sure not in mainstream white America.

  “Before the Sixties, simply being a great athlete [like Joe Louis or Jackie Robinson] was seen as a real contribution to the civil rights movement, the struggle for black justice and equality. But that wasn’t the case anymore. The Spinks brothers gave the [pre-Sixties] narrative, or that was the narrative that was constructed around them.”

  Bruce Newman wrote in July 1978 in Sports Illustrated, “Last month, while Leon Spinks was dancing in a discotheque with quarters jammed in his ears, Ali was in Moscow, deep in conversation with Leonid Brezhnev at the Kremlin.”

  Leon told Newman, “People may be disappointed because I’m not Ali, but times change and the world changes. Now I’m the champion. People want the heavyweight champion to fit a certain image, and they’re afraid I’m nothing but a dumb nigger. But I’m just Leon.”

  Leon’s being Leon meant that he was an accident waiting to happen. And each accident was a publicist’s nightmare.

  Three weeks after winning the title, Leon took a ride down to Camp Lejeune to visit his old Marine Corps buddies.

  Tony Santana remembers the day. “I’m on the third floor and he calls my name out, ‘Saaaantaaaaana! Saaaantaaaaana!’ I look out the window. ‘Hey, Leon!’ Then he yells to Hosea Sprewell and the three of us get in his new car and we go downtown. We’re walking down the strip, and this guy across the street says, ‘You didn’t beat Muhammad Ali. You ain’t nothing.’ We had to hold Leon back because he was gonna go after him. Here he is, the champion of the world, and he’s ready to fight this guy.

  “And then we went to this chicken shack and this old lady says to him, ‘Are you Leon Spinks, champion of the world?’ He says, ‘Yeah, I’m Leon Spinks, champion of the world.’ And he’s sucking his thumb. He’s sucking his thumb! He’s the champion of the world and he’s sucking his thumb!”

  The guys continued to cruise the strip until the police stopped them for a mi
nor traffic offense. When Leon failed to produce the car registration, the cops escorted him to the local precinct.

  “Me and Sprewell go to the precinct, but Leon wasn’t there,” says Santana. “He must’ve bailed himself out or they knew who he was [and let him go]. But we knew where to find him. We could always find him across the tracks.”

  In the seven months after taking the title, Leon was arrested five times—once taken away in handcuffs after driving the wrong way on a one-way street. He was stopped for smashing up his Lincoln Continental in Detroit, crashing his Corvette through a fence in Ohio, speeding in North Carolina, and possessing one-hundredth of a gram of cocaine in St. Louis. The coke had a street value of $1.50, yet it landed a photo of a handcuffed Leon on the front page of nearly every major daily. Goodbye, endorsements. Hello, laughingstock.

  Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show: “The American Dental Association chose its poster boy today: Leon Spinks.”

  Garrett Morris on Saturday Night Live, portraying Leon in a caricature uncomfortably close to the lazy and slow-witted roles of black actor Stepin Fetchit: “I’m world heavyweight champion now and that be a psychological advantage.”

  Comedian Richard Pryor in concert: “Bad luck be tipping up on Brother Leon. That’s what gives him such heart to fight. Leon’s saying, ‘I ain’t got nothing to lose—I ain’t got no money, I ain’t got no teefus, and I definitely ain’t got no driver’s license. So what the fuck can you do to me?’”

  In the same breath that Pryor used to ridicule the new champ, he also exposed the heavyweight title for the myth that it was. “Only thing, I don’t like to hear when white people be saying, ‘He dumb, ain’t he?’ And niggers be agreeing with him. That’s what tickled me. Be happy for any nigger doing anything. ’Cause nobody ever said the heavyweight champion had to be no anthropologist anyway.

  “I say, ‘Leon, what do you do?’

  “‘I knock motherfuckers out.’”

  Butch Lewis told Sports Illustrated’s Calvin Fussman, “People would come up to [Michael] and make fun of Leon. Everybody had a Leon Spinks joke. [Michael] would want to punch those people in the mouth. He was confused. He wasn’t sure if that’s what happened when you became champion or if Leon was bringing it on himself.”

  Michael met with sportswriter Jerry Izenberg in Detroit soon after Leon’s victory and voiced his concerns about his brother.

  According to Izenberg, “[Michael] said he was gonna have a few fights and then stop fighting. He said, ‘I have to go with Leon. Leon has some problems,’ which I took to mean he was retarded.

  “And I said, ‘You mean you’re gonna put your career on hold?’

  “He said, ‘Yeah, well, I want to be with him. I want to take care of him and make sure he gets his money. You know, I’m not the smartest guy in the world but I can count. And Leon can’t.’”

  Bob Arum remembers the brothers in much the same way. “Michael always seemed so logical compared to Leon,” he says. “It seemed to me that Michael had some sense. Leon never had any sense. He was just not very smart. And he was irresponsible. You could’ve had Einstein advising him and it wouldn’t have mattered.”

  But Leon had no intention of shutting down the party. The only problem was that he had a title to defend. And the more he partied, the farther he drifted from training camp.

  The big money was in a rematch with Ali. The public knew it, the promoters knew it, and Leon’s handlers knew it. All of which posed the question: Who exactly were Leon’s handlers?

  Bob Arum and Butch Lewis said Leon was “their boy.”

  Mitt Barnes claimed he was Leon’s manager and accused Arum and Lewis of trying to steal his fighter.

  Milton Chwasky, a Butch Lewis–appointed lawyer who had filled in as Leon’s attorney before the Ali fight, was supposedly representing Leon for his first defense.

  Ed Bell and Lester Hudson, two Detroit attorneys, later replaced Chwasky.

  Who actually had Leon’s signature on paper? It’s possible they all did. But it didn’t matter.

  Nova Spinks told People in May 1978, “From the moment Leon won the championship, it’s been hell. Have you ever seen two or three dogs pulling on a rag? Well, Leon’s the rag.”

  Arum took the lead in the Leon sweepstakes, producing the signed contract that proved Top Rank had control of Leon’s first three title defenses and an option on the next three.

  At that point Don King entered the picture and things got even stickier. King offered Leon two million dollars to defend his title against Ken Norton instead of Ali. Norton, a King fighter and the number-one challenger, had been passed over when Ali signed to fight Leon.

  When Leon turned down King’s offer, WBC president Jose Sulaiman (a personal friend of King) ordered Leon to fight Norton. If Leon failed to do so, Sulaiman told him he’d be stripped of the WBC title.

  Arum knew Top Rank would make more money if Leon fought Ali, so he threw Norton a lowball offer of $200,000, assuming he would turn it down.

  But Norton took it.

  “They thought my ego would be so big I’d say no,” Norton said at the time, “but every fighter is hungry for the title. I want that title.”

  Ali wasn’t getting any younger and much preferred to fight Leon. He issued a statement at a news conference that aired as part of CBS Sports Spectacular.

  “Mr. Ken Norton says he deserves the first shot,” Ali announced, “but I’m truly the number-one contender in the eyes of the people of the world. My mail is ten-to-one in favor of Leon Spinks and myself getting together again…. The world is waiting for it. It’s tradition. The first defense goes against the ex-champion. Leon Spinks should fight me.”

  It was then that Chwasky got involved. As Leon’s lawyer, Chwasky announced that during the fight with Ali, Leon had aggravated a nagging rib injury that could delay the rematch. Skeptics pointed out that Leon had been seen a week after the Ali fight dancing at a New York discotheque until the wee hours, showing no signs of injury. They felt the whole thing reeked of Arum and that perhaps Leon’s supposed injury was merely a stalling tactic to frustrate Norton into signing against a different fighter. Regardless, the Nevada State Athletic Commission slapped Leon with a ninety-day suspension for not disclosing the alleged injury before the first Ali fight.

  Dave Anderson of the New York Times wrote in March 1978, “Ever since [Norton] called Arum’s bluff and accepted the $200,000 offer in good faith, Arum has been acting in bad faith, first by staging Ali’s nationally televised plea for a rematch and then announcing the Leon cartilage damage.”

  Arum now explains, “By that time Leon had gotten an advisor, some black lawyer from Detroit, I forget his name… yeah, Ed Bell … and he said he didn’t give a shit what the rules were, he was gonna do a rematch with Ali because that was the most money to be made. Yeah, I did what I could to get Ken Norton out of the picture so the rematch could happen.”

  All of the jockeying, posturing, and angling was lost on Leon. The WBC edict meant nothing to him. Ali had given him a shot and he wanted to return the favor. And so he granted Ali the rematch.

  Sulaiman held true to his word and stripped Leon of the title, handing it to Norton. The rematch would be for the WBA belt only, and of course, the lineal championship, which no sanctioning body could take away from Leon.

  Arum offered Leon and Ali five million dollars each for the rematch, predicting the fight would be TV’s highest-rated event. The agreement also produced a prizefight of sorts outside the ropes: Bob Arum vs. Don King. Their ring was the Washington Post.

  King: “[Arum] is one of the most devious and evil individuals I have ever met, who builds a success road on deviousness.”

  More King after calling Leon a “totally illiterate black man”: “[His illiteracy] is an indictment against the school system in the black ghettoes of the big cities of the United States. The teachers that passed Leon Spinks to the eleventh grade should be tied to a post and flogged.”

  Arum: “It was very unfai
r of King to say Spinks is illiterate. He is not illiterate. The kid can read very well. I have seen him read documents and newspapers. That is nonsense. He was in the Marine Corps. You can’t get in the Marines if you are illiterate.”

  King: “[Arum] has a slave master’s mentality of thinking he can treat people of color to do whatever is right for him. [He’s treating Spinks] just like in the slave days when the house nigger could do anything against another nigger and get away with it. Here’s a white man leading a black man into the paths of destruction.”

  Arum: “[King’s comments] are beneath my dignity. Everybody knows what King is—a total charlatan. I’m a real ‘slave master.’ In his ninth pro fight, Spinks is going to earn five million dollars. I’m really treating him badly.”

  America didn’t care who won the Arum-King slugfest. The real story was Leon, but there was nothing to write about because he was nowhere to be found. Throughout this entire mess—and even now that a rematch with Ali had been set for September 15, 1978, in New Orleans—Leon was still being Leon.

  Given a quarter of a million dollars for training expenses, Leon made sure not to hang on to a penny of it. He and his twelve employees—including Sam Solomon, Marine coach Art Redden, Gunnery Sgt. John Davis, Lester Hudson, Ed Bell, Roger Stafford, Mitt Barnes, full-time bodyguard Mr. T, part-time bodyguard Jerome Tunstall, and sparring partner Leroy Diggs—were put up at the Sea Pines Resort, an oceanfront getaway in Hilton Head, South Carolina, complete with the latest amenities and round-the-clock services.

  When camp opened on June 1, everything was in place. The back room of the Hilton Head Community Playhouse had been outfitted into a training camp, and a personal chef was on hand. Staff members stood at the ready, each one decked out in a light-blue “Leon Spinks World Heavyweight Champion” jacket.

  Leon’s publicists fed the press the standard line: The champ was hard at work, running in combat boots, chopping down trees, eating up sparring partners. The truth was they had no idea where he was.