12 Legends of Christmas: Sugar Ray Leonard
This household name shone from Olympic glory to the 'Four Kings' era
Name: Ray Leonard
Nickname: Sugar
Date of First Fight: 5th February 1977
Date of Retirement: 1st March 1997
Titles: World titles at welterweight, super-welterweight, middleweight, super-middleweight and light-heavyweight
Biography:
Ray Charles Leonard was born on 17th May 1956 in Wilmington, North Carolina. Unlike many boxers, Leonard did not have a troubled childhood. While he was a good student and not drawn to the streets, he was still tough and competitive, especially in sports.
Ray followed his older brother into boxing and was an outstanding amateur, winning the Nation Golden Gloves, Pan American Games and numerous other medals. His finest achievement was a gold medal at the 1976 Olympic Games, where he swept past every opponent he faced without dropping a round.
Leonard’s first major professional glory came in 1979 when he knocked out Wilfred Benitez in round 15 to win the WBC welterweight title. Two fights later, Leonard was beaten on points by the legendary Roberto Duran. He rebounded strongly from that first loss by outboxing Duran in a rematch so much that the Panamanian refused to continue fighting.
After a close first bout, Leonard and his team used a strategy of movement and taunting to throw Duran off his rhythm. It worked. Even though the fight was close, Leonard annoyed Duran who said “No Mas” or “No More” in Spanish and called it a night. Leonard later defeated Duran in a third fight when both men were past their best.
In their 1981 Fight of the Year, Ray inflicted the first career defeat on Thomas ‘Hitman’ Hearns with a 14th-round KO win. They fought again in 1989 and it ended in a draw. Leonard came out of retirement to defeat Marvin Hagler in 1987. It was the first time Hagler had lost in 11 years and the Brockton boxer never fought again.
When Leonard defeated Donny Lalonde in 1988, he made history by winning the WBC title at both super-middleweight and light-heavyweight. Ray also snapped the 36-0 record of dangerous Ugandan southpaw Ayub Kalule when they fought in 1981.
Leonard won world titles in five weight classes across 20 years as a professional fighter and was a lineal champion (the man who beat the man) at three of those weights. He was named the Boxer of the Decade for the 1980s and was the first fighter to earn over $100 million in purses.
With his shining smile and likeable personality, Leonard filled a gap created by the decline of Muhammad Ali. His part in the ‘Four Kings’ era, alongside Hagler, Hearns and Duran, helped keep boxing exciting and relevant. Leonard was trained by Muhammad Ali’s old coach, Angelo Dundee.
At his peak Leonard was a very talented fighter with fast hands, great balance and movement. His strong jab made openings for the overhand right and left hook. Despite his ability he was never afraid to mix it up with tough guys either.
Following retirement, Leonard was seen regularly as a boxing pundit and television analyst. He set up his own promotional company and starred on reality TV. As such a popular personality, Leonard has also appeared in films, provided motivational speeches and featured in advertisements.
Image Credits: PBC, ESPN.
I Love Boxing ! Been a hardcore fan for the past 50 years ? I'm 65 and witnessed two of the greatest decades back to back ? The 70's and 80's were both great ! With the Heavy weight's ruling the 70's and the 80's belonged to the Welterweight's ? In my opinion of course ! So thank you for this post well done ! Someone ask me a couple of years ago ? Who do I think would win between "Sugar Ray Leonard " AND "Money Man Mayweather" ? Both in their Prime as Welterweight's ? 🤔 My answer after much thought being ? The Sugar Man not the Money Man ? Leonard by Unanimous Decision 🥊🤔
When serious, boxing has always been brutal as a professional sport. (Then again, now there’s the utterly barbaric ‘ultimate fighting’, using barely covered knuckles and even bare knees or feet for K.O. blows — yet it’s legally selling live-viewing tickets to eagerly excited individuals and commercial-time slots to legitimate business advertisers.)
It has always both bewildered and bothered me how a person can throw a serious punch without any physical provocation. Also disturbing are the only-too-eager viewers, with some girls/women among them. In the early 1980s, I’d see from a distance the mostly-male ‘audience’ at the after-classes fights between a pair of almost-always male students, one of whom was needed to initiate the barbaric exchange.
A few years later, during my own troubled-teen years, I observed how by ‘swinging first’ a guy potentially places himself in an unanticipated psychological disadvantage — one favoring the combatant who chooses to patiently wait for his opponent to take the first swing, perhaps even without the fist necessarily connecting.
Just having the combatant swing at him before he’d even given his challenger a physical justification for doing so seemed to instantly create a combined psychological and physical imperative within to react to that swung fist with justified anger. In fact, such testosterone-prone behavior may be reflected in the typically male (perhaps unconsciously strategic) invitation for one’s foe to ‘go ahead and lay one on me,’ while tapping one’s own chin with his forefinger.
Yet it’s a theoretical advantage not widely noticed by both the regular scrapper mindset nor general society. Instead of the commonly expected advantage of an opponent-stunning first blow, the hit only triggers an infuriated response earning the instigator two-or-more-fold returned-payment hard hits.
I’ve theorized that it may be an evolutionary instinct ingrained upon the human male psyche — one preventing us from inadvertently killing off our own procreative species by way of an essentially gratuitous instigation of deadly violence in bulk.
Regardless, matters would remain peaceful, or at least non-violent, if every party shows the other due respect. And of course everyone follows the basic rule: Only a physical first-strike justifies a returned blow.