The Big Fight (22 page)

 

 

 

O
n March 28, 1981, I took on a fighter named Larry Bonds. Bonds was put out there as an easy payday before my next major challenge, in the fall, presumably against Tommy “the Hitman” Hearns.

I deserved a breather. All fighters do after waging war, as I did against Duran—two wars, to be precise. With the belt in my possession, I could afford to gather my senses, and dollars, and face an overmatched adversary such as Bonds. It was also reasonable to assume that the fans need breathers, too. Give them too many so-called Fights of the Year in, well, a matter of
months,
and you'd dilute the impact of each one. Sooner or later, they would feel cheated, and wouldn't pay to watch the contest on closed circuit. I wouldn't blame them. It is better to stretch these history-making events out as far as possible, slowly building the level of anticipation until it reaches a feverish pitch, to where people feel they can't miss out.

The fight was arranged in a hurry, my opponent apparently not finding out until about a month before. For Bonds, fighting was almost a hobby, his last ring appearance coming in April 1980 when he knocked out Costello (no relation to Don) King. Prior to that, his most recent bout was in September 1979. Bonds drifted from one menial job to another, working in construction, as a bouncer, and collecting rubbish. In the newspaper stories before our bout, he was described as “the Fighting Garbage Man.”

Bonds, however, was no bum. Ranked fifteenth by
The Ring
, he was a respectable 29-3. He possessed long arms, covered himself extremely well in the trenches, and blocked a lot of shots. He was a southpaw, which required me to make some adjustments, as lefties present the exact reverse angles on where to attack and defend. I sure couldn't take Bonds lightly, not with the Hearns match on the horizon. Bonds, though, wasn't ready for his close-up. During a prefight press conference, he asked me to sign some of my glossy eight-by-ten photographs. Can you imagine Duran, Hearns, or Hagler ever requesting my John Hancock? The only souvenir they would want was my scalp.

The fight itself, staged before twenty thousand at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, New York, was no contest from the opening bell. I backed Bonds against the ropes and he had nowhere to go. Late in the fourth round, I sent him to the canvas with a right uppercut. Game, set, and match, I assumed, as did the crowd. But Bonds bravely hung around until the tenth, when he became a little cocky for his own good, reminiscent of Davey Boy Green in Maryland. I nailed him with five straight punches to put him back on the floor. Bonds foolishly rose at the count of six. Here was a case where the fighter should perhaps have shown
less
heart.

I kept firing away until the referee, Arthur Mercante, mercifully stopped the mismatch, Bonds fortunate to leave the ring on his own power.

Three months later, at the Astrodome in Houston, I fought Ayub Kalule.

Unlike Bonds, Kalule was no breather. A converted southpaw born in Uganda, he was the World Boxing Association's junior middleweight champion, undefeated in thirty-six bouts, and had never been knocked down.

I was motivated, and not just because I could add another title. Tommy Hearns was on the undercard, taking on Pablo Baez. Being in the same building offered Tommy and me the chance to build the interest for our fight, set for September 16, at a site yet to be determined. As long as we both took care of business, nothing would get in our way. Tommy did his part first, staggering Baez with his signature right midway in round four. The referee stopped the bout thirty seconds later. Tommy used very little energy. I would not be as fortunate.

I looked good when I arrived in the ring, wearing a black robe with yellow serpents on each sleeve and black trunks with a yellow cobra head on my left leg.

The cobra wasn't for Tommy, who was also known as “the Motor City Cobra.” The cobra was for a Ugandan witch doctor who had been flown to Houston as a publicity stunt. Ugandan witch doctors are not too thrilled with the color black or snakes. Only in boxing.

I looked good in the fight as well, landing one jab after another in the first two rounds. I hoped to end the bout as convincingly as Tommy did and let the hype begin for September.

In the third, however, I bruised a knuckle in the middle finger of my hand when I struck Kalule with a left to the head, forcing me to rely more on the right. Still, I kept scoring well with both hands, mostly hits to the midsection. Somehow Kalule survived solid rights in the fourth and fifth and scored decently himself over the next several rounds. Maybe the witch doctor had put a spell on me after all. Late in the ninth round, I finally got to Kalule with two hard rights, a short left, and another right. Timbbberrr!

Kalule rose but was in a daze. With the round about to end, the bell would have saved him. Only, he didn't know it. After taking the mandatory eight-count from the referee, Carlos Berrocal, Kalule indicated he had enough. It was a smart move. I would have gone right after him in the tenth and might have hurt him badly. He could now safely return to his home in Denmark with an extra $150,000 in the bank.

I wish I had been as bright as he was. When the fight was over, I pretended I was Olga Korbut, launching a front flip near my corner. If the jump had been spontaneous, that would be one thing, but I had actually thought of the stunt the night before in my suite, figuring I would need an encore after another stellar performance in the ring.

Needless to say, I should have spent more time contemplating what to do
during
the fight. What I came up with turned out to be dramatic, all right—more than the audience ever knew.

The moment my feet were off the ground, I realized the degree of difficulty was higher than I had anticipated, and that's because I wore a protective cup, which restricted my ability to bend in the air and execute the necessary turn. I landed awkwardly, and was lucky I didn't hurt myself. I can't begin to imagine how embarrassed I would have been: “Leonard knocks out Kalule . . . then himself
.
” I think the East German judge got it right when he gave me a 3.5.

With Kalule out of the way, the conversation at the press conference in Houston shifted, naturally, to the upcoming duel with Tommy. I started to wage the fight before the fight, the one to seize the mental edge. There was no time to waste. I hoped to avoid a repeat of what occurred when Duran gained the upper hand at the Waldorf.

“I hope one day they give a medical examination to Tommy Hearns,” I said. “If you do an autopsy of his skull, you'll find he has no brain up there.”

The reporters jumped on that comment, as I knew they would. Only years later, long after I retired for the last time, did I recognize its sheer cruelty. It was comparable to the nastiest things Ali said about his opponents, primarily Frazier, whom he portrayed as an Uncle Tom before their first fight, and a gorilla before their third.

It would be easy to say that I was merely trying to pump up interest in the fight. Easy and wrong. The truth is that there were times, and that was clearly one of them, when I was simply sick of having to live up to the image of the smiling, charming, safe Sugar Ray. It took too much energy. Everyone wants to be a smart-ass at one point or another. I was no exception.

 

 

 

I
took several weeks off before I began to prepare for Tommy. The crack I made about his intelligence was not only mean, it was inaccurate. Tommy was very smart where it mattered most, in the ring, and he teamed with one of the craftiest trainers in boxing, Emanuel Steward. I knew Manny well from the days I spent as an amateur working out at his Kronk Gym in Detroit. Referring to me as “Superbad” for my speed and combinations, the other fighters treated me as if I were one of their own, and I was always grateful. This also meant Manny understood my strengths and weaknesses as well as anyone, and that included Angelo and Janks. He would have his fighter fully prepared for any game plan my team might devise.

I first realized how tough Tommy would be when I attended his fight against Cuevas at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit in August 1980. Tommy belted Cuevas, a monster puncher in his own right, at will, feeding off the excitement of his beloved fans. The bout was over in just under six minutes. I knew Tommy was good. I didn't know he was
that
good.

He had yet to leave the ring and was already lobbying for his next fight. “Come on, Sugar, let's do it,” he said, pointing his finger at me.

The people in the nearby rows said the same thing. All I could do was smile and wave. I couldn't make any promises until I avenged my loss to Duran, and that was far from automatic.

I respected Tommy Hearns but I did not fear him. I did not fear anyone.

In my opinion, and I wasn't alone, there were doubts about his stamina. Of his thirty-two fights, thirty ended by a knockout, the first fourteen, from November 1977 until January 1979, decided before the fifth round. Conversely, ten of my first fourteen went past the fourth, five lasting the distance. If I had beaten my opponents as swiftly as Tommy did, I could have spared myself a lot of sleepless nights. The next ten were no less taxing, six going at least seven rounds.

In retrospect, though, I wouldn't have changed a thing. With every strong test against accomplished foes such as Marcos Geraldo, Adolfo Viruet, and Ayub Kalule, I learned to be a better fighter. I learned to dig deeper when I thought there might be nothing left. If the path had been too easy, I might not have gained the confidence to win the title on my first shot, knocking out Benitez in the final round when the outcome was still very much in doubt. I proved I could cope with any predicament. In my lone setback, I battled Duran to the end, growing stronger as the night wore on. No one doubted
my
stamina.

In late July, I began to train in Phoenix, moving later to Los Angeles, and, finally, to Vegas, with the fight set for my familiar venue, Caesars Palace.

I was rusty in the beginning of camp, my sparring partners repeatedly connecting with lefts and rights to the head and body. I wasn't worried. As usual, it took a week or two for me to develop my rhythm.

Though Tommy looked like an ice cream cone at six feet one with only a thirty-inch waist, nobody in the welterweight division, or perhaps the entire sport, possessed a right like his. It made no difference that many of his opponents were not big-name fighters. They were professionals, each one punch away from pulling off the upset. At the same time, he wasn't as one-dimensional as it was assumed from the destruction he caused. His remarkable seventy-eight-inch reach, longer than some of the premier heavyweights in history, allowed Tommy to keep other men at bay. Just as the press failed to respect Duran's boxing abilities, they made the same error with Tommy. Of his 155 amateur victories, nearly all were by decision. The Hitman did not become the Hitman until he turned pro.

Once he acquired his reputation as a knockout artist, the adulation was not far behind. Boxing fans have forever been infatuated with fighters who could annihilate the opposition with a single blow. Many live vicariously through their heroes in the ring, and nothing is as heroic as one human being sending another to the floor, the bloodier the better. On many occasions, after my own battles and the ones I did commentary for on television, I'd scan the crowd and catch people attempting to copy the shots they just saw. A young fighter such as Tommy, only twenty-two, was most appealing. His followers could climb on board early, and hold on for what they believed would be a long ride. The fact that he lived in Detroit, the home of Joe Louis, might have also contributed to his swift rise.

W
hen I wasn't in the gym, I watched film, breaking down frame after frame to identify Tommy's weaknesses. He had his share. Every fighter does.

One was that he didn't know how to force a clinch. He never needed to; his fights were over too fast and he was always on the offense. Being aware of when and how to stop the action, if briefly, during crucial moments of a bout can't be overstated. The extra three seconds can be just enough time to clear the senses. That's why trainer Ray Arcel had been concerned with referee Carlos Padilla in the first Duran fight. Any clinches would be to my benefit. They would disrupt the mauling tactics Duran thrived on.

Tommy was also susceptible to body shots. The way to beat him, I deduced from the films, was to chop him down like a tree by going to the midsection as often as possible. He, like Benitez, would become increasingly frustrated with the fact that he was forced to respond to the action instead of dictating it, and the left hand would get lower and lower. Before he knew it, the fight would be well into the late rounds, and he would be running out of answers. It took him twelve rounds in April to beat Randy Shields, and Shields was not in the division's upper echelon. Another disadvantage would be that the pressure on fight night would be unlike anything Tommy had ever faced. There is no way to know what that pressure will feel like until you walk down the aisle, and by then there is nothing you can do about it.