Leonard remembers one occasion in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when he and his ‘boys’, including his brothers, jotted down the number of every girl who approached them at his sparring sessions and flew back weeks later to ‘divvy up the pool of talent’.
He was married at the time to Juanita Wilkinson, his first serious girlfriend, who had just given birth to a son, Ray junior. Given the life of relative sobriety he now enjoys in southern California with second wife, Bernadette, he offers explanations – but no defence – for his conduct.
‘I don’t hold any regrets whatsoever about my life besides hurting people I loved,’ Leonard says. ‘From the alcohol to the drugs, even the sexual thing with my coach – I wish it hadn’t happened, but you know what, it motivated me to be strong and stand up.
‘The toughest thing for me was to admit that it happened, to reveal my character. That makes me a better person. I have nothing to hide.’
Hard as it may be to fathom from his achievements, which spanned 36 professional victories in 40 fights and world titles in five weight divisions, Leonard was never destined to find his calling through his fists. A congenitally introverted child, he was named by mother, Getha, after her hero Ray Charles, in the hope that he might become the singer of the household.
Such a dream was not readily entertained, though, amid a routine of domestic violence in which his father, Cicero, would beat his brothers with an extension cord.
‘As much as I detested the violence, I was drawn to it,’ Leonard recalls in his book. ‘I admired the power and control held by those who resorted to it.’
His path was sealed when, at Parkdale High School, he unleashed a few unerring left hooks to flatten the playground bully. The perception of Leonard as too diminutive, too slight for the pugilistic arts had been emphatically erased. Leonard was the ultimate exponent of boxing theatricality.
He was a choreographer of the canvas, so fleet of foot and sharp of mind that he intuited his opponents’ weaknesses quicker than they could.
One needs only to re-watch the 11th round of his 1987 middleweight triumph against Marvin Hagler at Caesar’s Palace, where he leant away from punches with almost a mocking ease, to realise as much. ‘It takes two great fighters to make a great fight,’ he observes, ever respectful.
‘You get these moments in the ring that live forever. That’s what Muhammad Ali accomplished and I hope that I have, too.’
Indeed he has. Leonard glamorised his sport to an unprecedented degree in the Eighties, pulling in more than $100 million through his trilogy of headline rivalries with Roberto ‘Hands of Stone’ Durán, Tommy ‘The Hitman’ Hearns and, finally, ‘Marvelous’ Marvin.
The dynamic with Durán, the unhinged Panamanian once rumoured to have pummelled a wall until his hands filled with blood, was by far the most spiteful. The slick Leonard, paraded as an icon for black and white America, was repulsed by his adversary’s constant trash-talk.
But he could abide his 1979 defeat to Durán in Montreal, on the very stage where he had won the Olympic final against Cuba’s Andrés Aldama three years earlier, still less.
‘That fight I could talk you through verbatim,’ he reflects. ‘I could tell you about each round and how, if I had postponed the fight for a day or two, I could have won. I knew in the dressing room that I was in trouble. I didn’t feel that presence of greatness. I didn’t have my ‘A’ game – and you didn’t fight Durán without that.’
Leonard would lose over a savage 15-round slugfest, pounded by so many shots that it made his wife faint, but the rematch five months later proved redemptive.
‘Oh, the second fight was just a thing of beauty,’ he says of his revenge in New Orleans, where he forced Durán to quit with the words ‘No más.’
‘Ray Charles came out and sang America the Beautiful. That, combined with me being in incredible shape and extremely confident, convinced me that I would win.’
The duel that defined Leonard was his 1981 bout with Hearns: a contest that fulfilled its breathless billing as ‘The Showdown’ as he jinked around the Detroit man’s superior jab, eventually pinning him to the ropes and unleashing a decisive, breathtaking salvo of punches.
What Leonard remembers most from the night, though, are the words of his long-time trainer Angelo Dundee, who died last month aged 90. With his left eye closing after 12 rounds of Hearns’s bombardment, and his reputation on the line, he heard Dundee tell him in the same harsh voice that had so galvanised Ali and Sonny Liston: ‘You’re blowing it, son.’
Leonard argues: ‘Those words were perfect. He said the right thing at the right time. I could just feel what he meant. I looked into his eyes and it was an indication that the fight was too close for comfort.
‘I was pretty messed up, it was 100 degrees in the ring, and Hearns was difficult to figure out. But Angelo activated something that we all have: desire and determination.’ This analysis echoes perhaps the greatest accolade he was ever given, from Ali himself.
‘To be legendary, you have got to have heart, and Ray’s heart was bigger than all the rest.’
Leonard’s flaw was that he was so in thrall to this impulse, he would act against both medical wisdom and his own better judgment. In 1982, he had been diagnosed with a detached retina, which threatened blindness in his right eye, but still he submitted to a succession of comebacks, including repeat instalments against Hearns and Durán.
Rationalising, Leonard explains: ‘It’s the euphoria. There’s nothing greater than having your hands raised after you have beaten the odds.
‘People try to live vicariously through fighters, but it’s one-on-one, it’s primal. There’s no other feeling like it. The problem for me was accepting it – that nothing compares to being champ.’
His account of his coke-induced haze illustrates the ease with which he slipped into temptation, desperately seeking a drug even half as seductive as boxing. ‘It seemed so natural. You thought, ‘If Joe Schmo can do it, so can I.’ You are Sugar Ray Leonard. You’re supposed to be smoking the right cigars, wearing the right shoes. It was a crazy world.’
Only by committing this craziness to print has Leonard been able to measure his journey from shy child in Palmer Park, Washington, to cover-star status as arguably the finest pound-for-pound fighter the world has ever seen.
‘You don’t appreciate it until you stop, go back and take a deep breath. You look at the posters, the magazines, and realise that it was you. And you say, Wow, what a journey. What a ride.’ The Telegraph online article 19 March 2012 Oliver Brown, ‘Former World Boxing Champion Sugar Ray Leonard on his Bitter Sweet Rise to Greatness’
As much as I love boxing, I hate it. And as much as I hate it, I love it. The Kings I: From Ghetto to Glory to Gold ***** DiscoveryPlus 2021, Budd Schulberg
Boxing is always an opening act to everything else that is happening in the world … You knew on some level you were seeing history. ibid. Teddy Atlas
You have four great fighters: Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns, Roberto Duran, Marvin Hagler who were fighting each other, and it was enthralling. ibid. Thomas Hauser
Their fights meant so much. The four kings gave us unique personalities, unique fighters who all fought each other to their credit and created a time in boxing that was maybe the greatest period in the history of the sport. ibid. Steve Farhood
Muhammad Ali was bigger than life and I wanted to be bigger than life too. ibid. Ray Leonard
Boxing allowed me to get the best help medically; I only did it to help my father to pay the bills. ibid.
He [Benitez] was so elusive. I never missed so many punches in my life. I never gave up. I never stopped throwing punches. ibid.
Leonard v Duran: We believe that this event will be the highest grossing boxing match in the history of the sport. ibid. Bob Arum
They have no idea how much work it took for me to become who I became. The Kings s1e2: Flesh and Blood, Leonard
New Orleans: Leonard v Duran II: The Super Fight 25th November 1980: And I glance over at Duran. Man, you are in trouble. This is America, baby. ibid.
Ray had humiliated this street kid. And something in him popped. ibid. Larry Merchant
Leonard v Hearns: I knew in my heart I’d give him something he’d never seen before. ibid. Hearns
I dominated him. I showed Ray what boxing was all about. ibid.
Ray Leonard needs a knockout to win this championship. ibid. US fight commentary
Tommy had the heart of a gladiator, a warrior. ibid. Leonard
You’re blowing it now, son. You’re blowing it. ibid. Dundee to Leonard
I come from nothing and now I’m reborn. My life changed. The Kings III: The Will to Win
I don’t blame the drugs or the alcohol for what I did. I was just a bad guy, a selfish guy … I shot the TV up. ibid.
Duran whispered in Leonard’s ear: You box him [Hagler], you can beat him. ibid. Steve Marantz
A right hand from Kevin Howard and Sugar Ray Leonard right on the seat of his pants! ibid. US fight commentary