#4 How Sugar Ray Leonard's Mind Really Worked

Shakeel Aslam: The upset over Hagler put me back in the spotlight and in a way I could have never imagined. About two months after the fight I got an urgent call around 10 on a cold rainy night from the police asking for my help in a case involving a man who had kidnapped an 18 month old girl but wouldn't tell them where he left her. Tell Sugar Ray Leonard, his idol. At first I thought it was one of my boys pulling a prank. Two minutes later I knew it was no prank. A squad car had pulled up in front of my house and officer asked if I would go with them to the kidnapper's apartment. I was assured the police would be close enough in case he tried to harm me. When we arrived, he was excited to see me, recalling the details of some of my biggest fights. I smiled. The idea was to humour him for as long as possible. That's cool, man, I said. We should have dinner and talk about this, but first, let's go find the baby you took. Is that okay with you? I'd like that a lot, he said. He took me and the police to a nearby park where we wandered around for about 10 minutes until we heard someone crying in the distance. The baby had been tied to a tree. Thank God she was not seriously hurt. The guy was immediately taken away. I couldn't sleep when I got home. I realised there was a lot more to being famous than I thought." That is an excerpt from the book, Sugar Ray Leonard, The Big Fight. It's actually the first autobiography I'll be covering so far. In my episodes, the last three have been biographies but this one was written as in Sugar Ray Leonard's own words. I first read this book when I was a teenager actually, over 12 years ago now and it's got me into this whole era of boxing. the likes of Roberta Geran, Tommy Hearns, Marvin Hagler, they were all part of what was known as the Fabulous Four along with Sugar Ray Leonard and it's been great, fun reading it again for the second time. I didn't think I'd ever be on a podcast speaking about it, but I'm excited to tell you about what I've learned and some of the cool stories from this book and who Sugar Ray Leonard the person was. So this quote that I just read tells you something straight away, that Sugar Ray Leonard was... obviously very popular. He was known as someone who was quite sweet, he was polished, charming, he was the second coming of Muhammad Ali, he was his successor, but he was also the guy who sort of rescues babies and talks kidnappers down, that's the kind of guy he was. But there was something else underneath that image which I never knew about until I read this book and it's about a fighter who became obsessed with control and then learned to win psychologically, not just physically, he's very underrated for the psychological warfare tactics that he... implemented against his opponents and something we'll dig in today. So one question that I had in mind as I was reading through this entire book, the entire episode was about what kind of environment produces a fighter like this and like with all great athletes what does it cost, what is the sacrifice? So I want to start with his childhood. So a consistent theme throughout the book is that Ray Leonard learns about pain and violence very early and was before he even got into the gym before he even started boxing and it started at home. I absorbed one blow after another that afternoon at the number two boys club. I didn't quit, just as my dad wouldn't, searching for any openings to make the skinny kid feel the same pain I did. It didn't matter. I didn't land a single hard blow. While he kept connecting with lefts and rights I never saw. My head was pounding, my legs were burning. Blood was pouring from my nose. Mercifully the slaughter ended. I was no son of Cicero Leonard. Fortunately daddy didn't notice the damage on my face, nor did any of my five siblings. and after healing from the wounds I returned to the much safer world of comic books in which the good guys prevailed over the forces of evil." Straight away you can tell that if you read this you wouldn't realise that you're reading the words of a world champion boxer. He didn't enjoy fighting at the start. It actually reminds me, one of the reasons I was interested in this book in the first place is that I did boxing when I was in my teens as well and I really enjoyed it and Sugar Leonard along with a number of other boxers such as Imam Dali and my vape box all the time, Mike Tyson, they all inspired me and I actually remember coming away from that same feeling. I had a sparring match one day with my friend and I got bloodied twice, my nose was all bloodied up and came back home the next day, my nose was sore and I was like, oh, I don't know if this is sport for me, but I continued going and one thing that I've taken from this quote as well is that again, there's a consistent theme and I mentioned it in previous episodes, but we've spoke about it before. the story of the father is embedded in the story of the son, so he's already mentioned that he's no son of Sachero Leonard, so there's already this need of approval from his dad and it's the exact same thing that we saw with Tiger Woods and his dad, Woods, where he was doing things to please his parents, he was doing things to try and follow in their footsteps and that's exactly what Ray Leonard's doing here. His dad grew up fighting, he loved fighting, he would stage fights in his front yard against anyone and it was on his one day off work as well. That was the world that was grown up in and the interesting thing is Ray admits that he hated violence but he was drawn to it specifically to the power that it represented. Violence was nothing new to me. I saw it in my home as well. Whenever my dad taught my brothers a lesson for acting up, which was quite often, though it didn't keep them in line for very long, his methods of discipline included an extension cord and making us bend down and put our heads between his legs while he hit us with his belt. As a shy kid who mostly stayed out of trouble, I wasn't punished nearly as frequently as my brothers. Yet as much as I detested the violence, I was drawn to it. I admired the power and control held by those who resorted to it." And that's why Boxing made sense for him because in the ring he had this great sense of power, this sort of total control over his destiny which he didn't have at home, he didn't have in the surroundings around him. He grew up in Palmer Park which wasn't a great area in those days, I don't know if it is now. And the violence at the home went further, went beyond just the beatings at him and his brothers took, his parents fought constantly. His mum once stabbed his dad in the back because she thought he was cheating on her and the reason it matters is because of what caused that violence. It was always about women and what did Ray do when he got older? He did the exact same thing. The fights between my parents gave me nightmares for decades. 40 years later, I still can't cope with any yelling and screaming, though I was unable to avoid it during my own doomed marriage. My ex-wife Juanita and I were no different from my mother and father. So I wanted to bring that quote, that quote doesn't come. way until way later on in the book when Reyes in his late 20s, he's professional boxer then. The fights between my parents gave me nightmares for decades. 40 years later, I still can't cope with any yelling and screaming, though I was unable to avoid it during my own doomed marriage. My ex-wife Juanita and I were no different from my mother and father." So I wanted to bring that quote, that quote doesn't come way until way later on in the book when Reyes in his late 20s, he's professional boxer then. But... It just shows that there's this full circle story where he's somehow turned into his dad and what fascinates me is like how does that happen? And is it just the environment that he grew up in? Is it because he saw his dad doing it, he thought he could do it himself? Well, it goes a little bit more deeper than that and we'll get into it. So the violence wasn't just at home, know, his mum stabbing his dad, it was everywhere around him, it was the neighbourhood, the streets, all of it and he saw violence all the time. There's another story here. One afternoon, several of us Several of us were hanging out near the front entrance to the Palmer Park Recreation Centre when we stumbled upon an argument between a thug in the neighbourhood and a fat mentally challenged kid. The guy suddenly took a wrench and pounded the kid's head over and over. The blood gushed out the way you see it in the movies. He didn't care that we watching. He knew we weren't going to call the cops or help the kid, or we'd have the rest of his friends coming after us. That is very brutal. To see that such a young age, and you can see what he's saying as well as... there's no forgiveness, there's no mercy. You mentioned specifically that he's a thug and mentally challenged kid, this is the environment that he was working, he was growing up into. It wasn't nice and I can't imagine growing up in that sort of place myself and turning out okay when I'm older, you definitely have some sort of trauma. So, another thing that he faced was racism quite early as well. This was the 1970s, but what's striking is that no one around him addressed it, not even his parents and he says this about that. As African Americans in a white dominated culture we were different. It was not until one hot summer afternoon when I was eight or nine years old that I realized how different. I was walking with several friends to the Washington Monument a few miles away when we pulled up to a bar on the city's predominantly white northwest side. The others stayed outside in the shade while I went in to ask for a glass of water. Get the f**k out of here, N-word. The bartender said, I wasn't naive. I knew what the N-word meant, but I had came up only in casual conversation with other kids in the hood when we chatted about how the Honkeys took advantage of black folks. Now for the first time I heard the word from the lips of a white man. For some reason I didn't tell my friends but when I got home that night I could not wait to share this experience with my parents. They would surely sit me down and explain the painful history of racial prejudice in the United States and how I should cope with similar insults in the future. No explanation though came then or ever. Mama shrugged the incident off. She and daddy believed as many blacks did who grew up back then that if you're white you're right, if you're black step back. So you know, that's quite a learning experience to grow up in. So, when Ray fell into boxing, it wasn't just a sport that he was born to, it was a... the ring meant something to him. It meant that he had control where outside of it, he didn't... everything was crazy, it was chaos. And there's one more thing from his childhood I want to mention, but I'm going to hold back for now. He carried a wound throughout his whole career and it shows up later in the book, it shows up later in his life and it rattles him. It's something that you can't escape and it breaks him down when it's dark, when the night is there and the lights go off. But I don't want to get into it right now because I don't want to take away from what made Ray great so we'll focus on that first and then we'll get back to it later. So Ray eventually finds a sport and like I said earlier he'd never enjoyed violence but he's hooked because he's found a craft and it's something that he's actually quite good at. What did matter was that from that day forward I was hooked. The appeal did not result from any desire to pound my opponent into submission. In my family, I was the one least likely to fall in love with fighting. I wasn't like Roger, who could make it through lunch without starting a fight, or the occasionally combative Kenny. I was the reserved Leonard. I preferred to read about heroes instead of trying to be one." So if you ever saw Ray when he was older, the professional, he was suited and booted, he's well put together, he's charming, you wouldn't picture him as a boxer at all and it's because he didn't have a necessarily violent streak outside the ring. But as a youngster he became obsessed because he was actually good at it. And he speaks about the book about what made him return to the recreational centre where he practiced boxing day after day and explains why here. What inspired me to wake up at 5 each morning to run 5 miles in the snow with icicles hanging from my lips? For one thing, I knew I was finally good at something. Unlike my unsuccessful attempts to excel in basketball, track and wrestling, in basketball I was too small and I didn't have a good enough jump shot to make up for it. In track I seem to pull a muscle every other day. I took up wrestling for several months but tore a ligament in my shoulder and did not wrestle again. With every sport I was just behind my peers. Yet within a few months of boxing I knew I had to throw a jab and avoid a left hook. But picking up new skills wasn't what drove me the most. What drove me was the power it instilled. That sense that I was in control. Instead of being a victim. In the ring for the first time in my life I felt I could conquer any force. Strange isn't it? The ring is where men try to do great harm to one another. and where I felt the safest." And then he speaks about the process, not just the results that he had, and he loved every part of the grind. I relished every aspect of the process. From the five mile runs in the dark and cold to the jabs I threw from one end of the court to the other to the consistent pounding of the speed and heavy bags. After school I couldn't wait to get to the gym to see if I was any sharper with my punches or quicker with my footwork. I also developed my own special workout routine in which I sometimes ran to school instead of taking the bus. The other kids assumed I was crazy. and maybe I was but I needed to believe that extra effort would pay off someday. I came home from the rec centre on numerous occasions with a black eye or a busted lip, much to the dismay of my mother but I always went back the next day for more." That's crazy, he's admitting there that he was getting beaten up but he enjoyed it so much that he could keep going back. I think boxers are different breed if I'm honest, anyone in the fight sport is a different breed because you're going through physical pain, it's not just that... You're not just facing the pain of training, where your muscles are aching, that lactic acid is burning and you have to fight through it. You're fighting someone who's trying to hurt you and on top of that, your whole body is going through a different type of mission that no other sport sort of prepares you for. And it reinforces that the best athletes love their sports like this. They're obsessed, they're passionate. They want to do it all the time. They're constantly looking to improve, even as kids. And... It reminds me of like, I watched the Instagram post not that long ago and it was of Joe Cole, he's a Chelsea footballer. I'm not too sure if he's considered a legend, maybe in Chelsea football club he is. I'll be honest, I don't even know enough about him to make that judgement but he says something that captures this exact mindset that Sugar Ray Leonard and all of the great athletes have. If there was a kid on this state who could do something with a football that I couldn't do, I couldn't sleep, I go to bed thinking I need to work this out. Most kids are watching Peppa Pig or whatever. I'm nine year olds thinking, Jermain can do that flick. I can't do it. I need to get better. So I'd set my alarm in the morning. In the summer holidays, no one's up before 10. And I'd be out there practicing. I just had this mindset as a kid. I needed to be able to do everything. And I think that stayed with me my whole career. So that's a completely different sport. That's football. But the mindset is identical and that's what's consistent across all of them. And Joe Cole, like I said, I don't know if he was a legend, but if he had that mentality and... he still, I mean he still accomplished great things. Like what separates him from someone who's even greater than him? Someone who would be on this podcast such as ⁓ know, Ronaldo, a Cafu, an Iniesta, you know, people who really change the game. So, it's just fascinating to see that this mindset and it's amazing to hear these athletes speak about it. So, another thing that Ray loved as well in particular was studying his opponents, he was a strategist. So he treated every fight like a puzzle that he had to solve. He would watch the fight and he would plan his fight almost like it was chess. And he says this, In preparing for Price, I studied films of his fights. Depending on the strategist, I trusted more than anyone, myself. I was trying to solve a riddle. If I figured it out, the other man was in trouble. If I didn't, I was. When I reflect on what I miss most about my boxing career, it isn't the noise in the arena, or the articles in the papers, or the camaraderie in camp. I miss the hours and hours of searching for the ways to exploit my opponent's So Ray, he enjoyed that challenge of actually watching these boxers opponents and trying to look for little gaps in their armour that he could exploit and I don't know, my mind, Corey Bryant just came into my mind because he used to watch game tape as well and it be of himself and it would be of his opponents and some of the great legends of his time as well and it's all about being gross in your sport and like knowing it inside out and just constantly trying to improve and in this case... Ray's not trying to get his ass kicked, that's why he's doing it. And then he describes his focus almost like an actor preparing for a role, days or weeks before the moment, not just the night before, but in the weeks leading up to it. And then this link to something that runs throughout the whole book, there's basically two versions of Ray. There's Sugary Leonard and then there's Ray Leonard and he could always tell which one was showing up by looking at himself in the mirror and seeing how he'd react. As usual, there was only one way to find out. I got up and went into the bathroom to look in the mirror. I checked the muscles in my arms and legs. They were bulging. I checked the speed of my flurries. They were fast. I began the final check, the one to tell me if I would be Sugar Ray or Ray. I got the answer I was praying for. My eyes were wide and clear. And he this ritual throughout his career, his first loss against J-Ran actually. He looked in the mirror and he said that he felt nothing in his eyes. and he already knew and for the rest of that fight day he just didn't feel like himself. So there's something in that where he would be able to visualise and self-reflect in that mirror and to see if he was fully ready and it helped him. And Sugar Ray, his boxing persona was dominant, he was loved by everyone, he was always in control, that's impression that you get from the book in Ray's own words. Whereas Ray was the family man. he didn't actually like fighting, he liked comic books, he liked reading about heroes rather than being one. But the issue was that Ray, he says this at the end of the book, Ray couldn't help him in the ring, Sugar Ray could and that's why he was as as he was. So I want to speak a little bit more about what boxing gave Ray Leonard and how it changed him as a person and he says this in his own words, the sport turned me into a different person, afraid of no one. One day a bully probably about 6 feet 2 threw me against a lock at a Parkdale High. I was almost knocked out cold. The old me would have searched for any peaceful way to end the mismatch. The new me fired off at a succession of left hooks missing wildly. The bully began to laugh, yet each hook kept coming closer and closer until one put his butt on the ground. The guys who had surrounded us expecting to see me get whooped were speechless. For the rest of the afternoon I walked around the school as the man. Everyone spreading the word. Did you hear what Ray did? I looked down at my fists, seeing them in a whole different light. I realised they could operate outside the ring as well as they did inside. As for the bully, he never bothered me again." This is a pivotal moment in Ray's life. was before, was just shortly after Ray started boxing, he would never fight and he would always find a way out before boxing, but now he had something, he the ability to defend himself and with that came this real confidence and you can see it there that he felt like the man and I personally think that from my own experience and just... from hearing the greats speak about it. think any, I think Boxer or any martial art is genuinely important for young kids because it helps them develop discipline, build control and acknowledge that you can protect yourself if you need to. It doesn't mean you go about starting fights but it just means that you can actually get, you more humble because you know there are people in the ring that can whip your ass and if you're outside the ring you never know who's a Boxer. So anyone can actually beat you. So the best thing is always to remain control and remain calm. and that's what these great fighters do, they have the humility and respect to do that. So the sport basically brought Ray real glory and after Tommy Herons the world opened up completely. He became known, he became famous and this is what he says in his own words. I thought I knew what fame was before the fight with Tommy. It was nothing compared to how I was treated after the fight. I travelled to the White House to visit President Reagan and up to Hollywood to mingle with celebrities. I appeared on talk shows and was named the Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year. I was Sugar Ray Leonard 24-7 and loved every minute of it. Ray was never around, I didn't need him. He would have just gotten in the way." There's that, he mentions that again, that split personality where Ray, Sugar Ray Leonard, Sugar Ray Leonard was loved by everyone. Ray wasn't there, he wasn't important, he didn't need him. And one of the key influences in Ray's life was Angela Dundee and it's worth talking about here. He was a massive part Ray's career. He wasn't actually a traditional... trainer in the sense that he would do pads or he'd be there in the gym with Ray. He was more of a strategist and previously prior to Sugar Learner he'd managed Muhammad Ali for most of his career and Ali had these words about him as well. He said this back in the 1970s. You see a real trainer when he gets a real fighter he doesn't have to train him. He just coach him on what to do, who he's fighting and what stable he'll fight, what to look for. So he's mentioned it there as well that He's more of strategic sense of matchmaking and coaching on the day and dissecting opponents and trying to, I guess, mentor or coach his boxer to get that win. Angelo's biggest contribution to Ray's career was actually timing. Ray was going to fight Tommy Hearns much earlier if Angelo hadn't stepped in. We can't fight Hearns. We're not ready for him. Tommy was not a star yet, but Angelo recognised his talent and feared the possibility of an upset. He also envisioned the day, perhaps a year or two away. when I would fight Tommy for a lot more than $100,000. In October, when the Hearns demolished Pedro Rojas in the first round, Angelo appeared wiser than ever. What would have happened if Tommy and I had fought in 1978 instead of our duel for the ages three years later? I can't be certain, though regardless of the outcome, the fight would have altered the rest of my career and probably not for the better." So he shows you how much influence a coach has in a boxer's life and how important they are, because he saved them from potential... upset because Tommy at that time was on fire, he was knocking everyone out, he's a great fighter. Definitely want to do a read a book about him ⁓ at some point, need to see what's out there. He was an amazing boxer, like 6 feet 2, he was slender but he had a lot of power and he had this jab that was just like a piston, it was amazing, he's top boxer. So, after the Hounds when some people felt public's, Ray's public persona was fake and he addresses this directly. So this personality split again, he mentions about Sugar Ray and Ray. It reminds me of Tiger actually, two completely different people depending on the context but Tiger's girlfriend at the time said she felt like she was dealing with two different people. one socially awkward and quiet and the other confident, strong and in complete control. And then I think at this level, you have to compartmentalise completely, you have to get into the zone and that can genuinely turn you into two different people, the performer and the human. The performer is there in front of the cameras doing the promo, doing the media training, doing the media work and when they're doing the actual sport as well. Whereas the human is who they grew up as and who they are to their family, their friends outside of the sport that they're obsessed with. and Tiger had that, Sugar Ray had that, a lot of sports, lot of athletes have that. So I want to speak about one of Ray's main rivalries and what happened and that is Roberto Duran. He was known as Manos de Piedra which means hands of stone. The reason, I mean it's in the name itself, but he had vicious power, he had really, really strong punches and all of his opponents said it. And it was actually Ray's first loss and it was one of the most important fights. important fights of his career in terms of what he taught him. Because before the fight, Duran was vicious and the build up, was very crass. He was swearing at Sugar Ray, swearing at his wife, was just insulting him, he had no respect, he didn't care. He was brutal. And Joe Frazier actually once asked what he thought of Duran and who it reminded him of and he responded with Charles Manson as in the serial killer because he was crazy, he was nuts. Funny thing is, Roberto Duran was actually one of Mike Tyson's favourite fighters as well, which explains a lot. You always go after the heroes that you want to be. So Duran, one of the things that he did was to win that fight was he got inside Ray's head and that's where Ray made his first mistake. During those final days, I saw Duran everywhere. I saw him when I was jogging before dawn. I saw him when I was pounding my sparring partners who wore t-shirts with his name printed on the front. I even saw him in my dreams. Never did another fighter penetrate my psyche space as much as Duran. and there was nothing I could do about it. Each time I saw him, he was where he belonged, on the floor, and after just dissecting hours of film, I knew precisely how to put him there. I would box him to death. So he had the right plan, but Duran got in his head completely, so deeply that Ray abandoned it totally. As dangerous as Duran was, however, his best wasn't going to put me away. I too was ready to die in the ring, and that, unfortunately, was where I went wrong. I fought Duran toe to toe instead of exploiting my superior boxing skills. So, Juran, by getting in his head, worked him up so much that he made him fight his fight. Juran wanted Leonard to fight the way he was going to do, which was toe to toe and Juran, being the sort of superior slugger, he beat him to it and if he had just stuck to the game plan, stuck with the boxing, he would have beat him and he was undefeated at that point and I think as boxers, when they are as ambitious, as great as Shuri Leonard is, One guy who comes to mind is Roy Jones Jr. When you're going for like a complete record, there's very few boxers who actually have ended with a 0 loss record and I can name them for you in one hand. Joe Calzaghe, he's a middleweight boxer from Wales. Floyd Mayweather, obviously well known and one of the most famous ones is Rocky Marciano from 1930s, 40s and they all ended their careers on a 0. Actually, Dennis Crawford most recently as well ended with 0, he's a great boxer. So it's very difficult and they want to do that because they want their legacy just to go on forever. Because if you never lose, there's always that question, there's always that what if. And he lost that. And he says this, I felt a deep sense of loss as if a part of me had been taken away for good. I was certain I would defeat every opponent until there was none left and then retire for real on top, undefeated like Marciano, invincible forever. As it turned out, I was not invincible. And so the rematch that he had with Duran is one of my favourite stories in the whole book because it's a complete reversal. This time Ray got into Duran's head instead and he got a strategy and was actually inspired by his brother Roger who wasn't the sharpest person in the toolbox and this is what he said. There was one more significant change in my approach to the rematch. The source was Roger. Ray, you got to embarrass Duran, he told me. When you do, he would lose trust in himself and you will have him. Jurran has to always be the macho man, make fun of him and he will not know how to handle it. And then here's what happened in the fight. I then recalled the words of the renowned psychologist Dr. Roger Leonard. Ray, you got to embarrass Jurran. What did I have to lose? If it didn't work, I'd know soon enough. In the seventh, I dropped my hands to the side and stuck my chin out, inviting Jurran to hit me. I didn't choreograph any of these moves in advance, but after I could see his frustration, I kept improvising. I did the alley shuffle. I was performing more than I was punching. Midway through the round, I wound up my right arm several times as if I were about to throw the bolo punch I played around with during camp. I faked Juran out, firing a straight left jab and said, the jab did not hurt him, but the reaction to the jab did. It hurt him badly. The fans were laughing. Juran could take punishment, perhaps more than anyone in my area, either, or any either. What he could not take was being made to look like a fool. That went against the manly Latin American image he spent a lifetime building." And so this led to one of the most infamous moments in boxing. Joran quit on his still, he was done at end of it and it wasn't because he was hurt, it was because he was humiliated and the fight was known as Omas, which basically means give up. Apparently he said that in his various series, but apparently he said that as he quit and then it means that it was quite shocking, it was shocking to see a boxer like him as strong as he was to quit because He just didn't have the heart to go on and it still goes on to this day. Everyone knows about the fight, he became infamous for it. It doesn't take away any of the great things that he did but it is like a stain on his name and I don't think he's ever really come out and admitted it that he was just sick. think afterwards ⁓ he made an excuse about having stomach cramps which is obviously not true, you can go watch the fight yourself. And then reading this it got me thinking about who in recent years has made other boxers quit and one man comes to mind and that's Lomachenko, Vasily Lomachenko, he's a Ukrainian fighter and to give you a little bit background about him, he had 396 wins, one loss as an amateur. On top of that he had two Olympic gold medals. That's the type of pedigree that this guy had, he was amazing. He made two credible boxers quit in there still. There was Guillermo Rigondo and Nicholas Walters. And Rogonov himself, he had 463 amateur wins and two Olympic gold medals and he still quit. And he blamed it on his hands being injured, you know, loads of boxers. I know it's easy for me to say sitting here, but a lot of boxers have been through worse in a fight and continued. These boxers quit because they were getting humiliated and they couldn't handle the pressure. And that's exactly what Ray did to Rebet or Duran. ⁓ Funny thing with Lomachenko, he made four boxers quit. in a row for various reasons but they quit on their still and he won. So Rey goes on to speak about what it actually takes to go to those dark places in a fight and what separates the good ones from the ones who make history. Most boxers don't go that deep and it's not because the will can't be summoned, it can. The hesitation comes from the pain one must tolerate to do it. You become exhausted and convinced you've given your last possible breath. As Ali Memer will put it in referring to the latter rounds of the Thrilla and Manila, you feel you're on the verge of death. That however is precisely when you've given more of yourself, no matter how much it hurts. This is what separates the good fighters from those who make history." Interesting, really interesting that he says it right there that it feels that you're on the verge of death and you're going to continue no matter how much it hurts and that's what separates the good from the great, especially in a sport like boxing where you literally could die. There have been many boxers who have died in the ring and it's very sad to hear as well. So Ray, he's a great fighter physically and the thing, he doesn't get credit enough, like I said, was psychologically, before the belt, before the fight even started, all of it. So, one of the first examples I gave you was of Duran. Now, I want to speak about how he defeated the great, marvellous Marvin Hagler. So, there's consistent theme in the book, race studies, his opponents obsessively and then he goes beyond that physical preparation to attack them psychologically. So, we already talked about what he did to Duran, but he ran the exact same play on Hagler. From that day forward, everything I said to the reporters over the following five months was designed to work on Hagler's psyche. I felt it was his weakest part. I was measuring him the same way I measured fighters in the ring, looking for an opening and pouncing on it. I benefited enormously from the work I had done to prepare for the fights of his I covered on HBO. I also knew from our talks at his house in Brockton and the house in Bethesda what motivated him and what scared him. For the press conference in Manhattan, for instance, I wore a jacket that had shorter pads to create the illusion of being as cut and muscular as possible. to show Hagler he wouldn't be able to overpower me. These are the lengths that these guys will go to. ⁓ He's trying to give this illusion that he's bigger than he is to Marvin who was a big guy, like he was strong. If you look at him, he's made of rock. Like honestly, the guy had one of the best physiques in boxing that I've seen and it was because of the hard work that he did and I cannot wait to ⁓ read a book about him in the future and speak about it. And then at the way end of the fight, ⁓ Ray showed outright disrespect, it's something that I've never actually seen a fighter do. He said, both he and I were asked to wait off to the side while the others stepped on the scales. I went first, Hagler patiently waiting as I came in at 158 pounds, but when it was his turn to be weighed, I walked away. I was letting him know that while he was the champ, I wasn't going to give an inch. And then he went even further. He sent a spy into Hagler's training camp. Apparently it was quite common in those days. I've never heard of that before in my life. But he says this, JD JD Long, over his disappointment about my retirement following the Kevin Howard fight after he Kenny had launched their own new promotion company, agreed to be a spy for us at Hagler's camp in Palm Springs, California. Spies and boxing had been around as long as punching bags, and with most sparring sessions open to the public, almost anyone could get in. For JD to get paid, he had to provide a picture of himself with Hagler. No problem, he dyed his hair grey, put on horn-rimmed glasses, and secured the photo on an autograph to boot. For three solid days, JD watched Hagler work out. The majority of what JD put in his report was nothing I had known before, but he did come up with one fascinating insight I'd use on Fight Night. He noticed that just before the bell would sound, to begin every round, Hagler would go stand in the middle of the ring as if to declare, this is my territory pal, I dare for you to take **** away from me. I decided that if I accomplished nothing else at Caesars Palace, I would reach the centre of the ring before he did." So it's as simple as that. know, Marvin Hagler struck me as someone who's a bit of an alpha. And the fact that he's taking centre stage is him saying, I'm ready, come at me and he's ready for the next round. It is quite intimidating, I can imagine it to be. so it wasn't just like that, that Ray won, he would also ask his coaches to shout when there's only 30 seconds left so that he could throw a flurry of punches and try and win the judges over. And then even inside the fight itself, in the final seconds of the final round, he's still playing the mind game. As the bell rang, I could not resist getting inside Hagler's head one last time. Wanna fight me now? I said, wanna fight me? There were the only words I said to him the entire fight. Ray won the fight, Hagler felt like he was robbed and he never forgave him. Years down the line, not years, sorry, months down the line, ⁓ Ray ran into him in the bathroom and he tried making conversation with Marvin and Marvin literally, he splashed water on his face, he gave Ray a cold stare and he just walked straight out. walk straight out, he didn't give him any time of day and then years later, even after he'd left, after that fight he left, he went to Italy to try and become an actor and I think he had some success but ever since that fight he wasn't the same, he felt like he was robbed. Early on in his career, he felt like he was robbed as well because he was never, although he was the A-side, he just didn't really have a real draw to his name and that's why he was quite jealous and envious of Sugar Ray because he felt like he was owed a little bit of what what Ray got at such an earlier stage in his career. So, what I want to speak to you now about is the cost of boxing. So, with every legend I've studied, there's always something that they paid to get where they got and for Ray, the cost was enormous and he retired four times. The problem with retirement was simple, without the gym, he was left with his own thoughts and to his own devices and he says this, this was during one of his breaks following an injury to his left eye, I think he had detached retina. So he said this, yeah as the days turned into weeks, the weeks into months, I was overcome with more more anxiety. Whenever I had felt those emotions before and it fairly often, I headed to the gym. There was nothing like pounding the bags or some poor soul's face to flush the anger out of my system. Without the gym, I needed a new haven. It didn't take me long to find one. I don't recall where I was or who I was when I did cocaine for the first time that summer. So he fell to drugs, the moment boxing wasn't there anymore and it left him with nothing to direct the pain into because he didn't have a sport, he didn't have anything to do, he was just waiting to get better and he was depressed because when you've known fighting for your whole life and then after that you can't physically do it, you're not allowed, what do you turn to? And he turned to cocaine and drugs. You could have done other things but it's hard, you can't really judge these guys. Another thing is I've been watching this show on Netflix called At Home With The Furies and it's basically a reality TV show but I've actually found it interesting because it follows Tyson Fury after his retirement, which was last year, you know, his retirement and what he gets up to and he explains it pretty well and something that he said stuck with me. A lot boxers after the ring they get depressed and they do turn to drugs and alcohol and they lose their way. Because they have no purpose, some of them turn to coaching, others do their own path. But it seems to be like a common theme throughout them and for Sugar Ray, for someone who's fought his whole life, the silence over time was genuinely quite dangerous for him. eventually went back into the ring and that was one of Ray's problems too. Once Tyson went back into the ring, literally just like a week or two ago, he had his first fight and he was calling it Anthony Joshua. So Ray says this about the great fighters of any era. So ⁓ you might spot something there and I might have just glanced past it but it's because I haven't mentioned his abuse yet because I didn't want to bring it in any earlier than it should have because I didn't want to overshadow what made Ray great. I didn't want to credit, or not credit, but I didn't want to put it down to that trauma that he faced because I think he had a lot of things, other things going on in his life that made him great and that kind of made him evolve into the great boxer that he was. just to give you bit of an understanding of what happened to him and why he was such a mess outside the ring. He was abused twice by two different people and it happened in the same year. One of them was a prominent Olympic coach. I'm not going to read the quote because I just find it too sickening. It's not nice to read and I can't imagine that happened to someone who's so impressionable and someone who's trying to... trying to achieve Olympic glory, Olympic success and wanting to become a professional boxer. Yeah, it's sad to read but I think it's important that you know what happened. And so because of all this, he was constantly searching for an escape. So the trauma that he had in the ring affected him, outside affected Ray. Sugar Ray Leonard was a boxer, he could get through it but Ray at home was a different guy. He was searching for an escape and the escapes kept making everything worse. I looked for any excuse to take a break, such as the time Juanita and I got into another heated argument only days before the fight. I don't remember what it was about, though I'm sure she accused me of sleeping with another woman and I'm sure she was right. Our disputes were rarely about anything else. Instead of calling a friend, which would have been the mature thing to do, I hung out in my hotel suite with four bottles of vodka. Vodka is no friend. Vodka never tells you the truth. Little did I realise that these desperate escapes into alcohol and later cocaine would soon become an almost daily occurrence, and that they weren't really escapes at all. I was not free. furthest thing from it. So there's a clear pattern to his life. He knew he was doing wrong. He cheated on his wife repeatedly, basically essentially turned into his father, which again reinforces the idea that the story of the father is embedded in the story of the son. I've said it from the beginning and here it is and it applies to so many athletes across the board, for good or for bad. And he says, he speaks about the Knights and how they were the problem. The Knights were not the problem. When I was in the middle of the act, I had the time of my life. I didn't think about Juanita or Little Ray. These women treated me as if I were a god, and I can't think of any men who would have resisted. Only after the deed was over, my needs satisfied, did I remember I was a married man breaking my vows once again. It would be three or four in the morning, I'd be in the arms of a stranger who was sound asleep, and all I could think about was that I had to get home before daylight arrived. When I saw the light, I would cry, not because I was afraid of how Juanita might react. I would usually talk myself out of any trouble or would buy her an expensive gift if talking didn't work. All would be forgiven until the next time and there would always be a next time. The reason I cried was because in the light, no longer protected by the darkness, I saw the ugly reality of who I had become." And the issue with rain, like so many boxes like Mike Tyson, he had bad people around him, had enablers, people who didn't stop him, a bunch of yes men, he had a bodyguard who had this little black book full of women's numbers that he'd collected over the years and he would use that whenever Ray was in a certain area in certain city and they were all attracted to him because he was a celebrity. The one thing I respect about Ray is that he doesn't actually blame any of them, he takes full responsibility. I couldn't have engaged in such despicable behaviour without a little help and I'm not referring to James Anderson or any of the boys I'm referring to the presence of alcohol and eventually cocaine which began to take over my life during the early 80s. Here I go again searching for a convenient scapegoat. If it wasn't my evil twin Sugar Ray, the booze or drugs had to be responsible for my transgressions. The fact is that I put those substances into my body. Me, Ray Charles Leonard. Not some character I invented. And it's actually, when I read this book, the book had only been out for a couple years, but Ray published this book back in 2011 and by that point he says himself that he'd been sober for five years. and he was dealing with all of this for over two decades. He quit cocaine apparently in 1980s but then he continued with alcohol and it didn't make things any easier. He got married for a second time as well, he eventually divorced Juanita, but I think I've not included too many quotes about her in this book, but she was a rock. She seemed like she was a genuine gem of a woman because she's stuck by Ray so many times. He kept breaking his vows, he kept cheating on her, he was not a good husband. He even said that when they used to go out for dinner or lunch or even to the movies, cinema, it wouldn't be just him going, it be him and his boys and she put up with it and she gave him so many chances. Ray, towards the end, was such a mess. I'm not trying to put him down or anything, I'm just literally trying to explain what happened to him outside of the ring and what happened to him outside of the ring was because of the abuse that he faced and he finally came to realise that but... In some of their fights, for example, remember Ray smashed a bottle and he poured a bunch of petrol in the garage and he said he was going to burn himself and that was to try and bring Juanita back. She didn't, she left and then one time she went downstairs, he got a gun and he shot the TV thinking that she'll come back and save him from killing himself. She didn't come back because she was that scared that he might shoot her. That's how messy and chaotic the... his life was, but outside in front of the cameras, in front of the glitz and glamour, you know, they look like America's ideal family. know, the family with the white picket fences. You he's in his 60s now, he's an old man. I read, I watched this video actually recently, it was a podcast, it's got Hotbox with Mike Tyson, he hosts the show and on this it was a star line-up, was Mike Tyson himself, Sugar Ray Leonard, Tommy Hearns and Sugar Shade Mosley. and honestly is one of the best watches because you could see that the fire still exists in these guys eyes. I didn't speak too much about Tommy Herons and Sugar Ray Leonard's rivalry but they had a great one. They had three fights in the end I believe or was it two and you could see the fire still burns. Tommy is still pissed at Ray. You can see that he's still wanting some sort of validation because he actually never beat Ray. He drew with him and everyone agrees that he was robbed. He should have won that fight and credit to Ray Leonard, he actually admitted that himself but it was just so cool watching these guys reminisce and they're friends really, they're friends but they chat some amount of shit and there was a couple of times in the show where it was heated, it got heated and you know the fire still burns in a boxer's heart and it was great to see, I would highly recommend watching it. So I want to close it here with a couple of quotes but I want to say that what I've learned reading this book is that Rey had this constant battle between the Sugar Rey persona and who he actually was as a person. A number of things in his life made that almost impossible to reconcile. At the start of this episode I talked about his hunger for control and by the end of it the book is clear to me that underneath all of that it was a fear of being forgotten and fear of not having legacy. That's why he retired four times. I've not mentioned that but he's retired four times and he kept coming back and it was because of this reason and he says it best here. If I never fought again, if my final appearance in the ring turned out to be my only loss as a professional, I would soon be forgotten. Or worse, ridiculed for walking away at the age of 24, I'd never be able to live myself." And then at the very end of book he sums it all up in the simplest possible way. People assume I was happy during my fighting days and I often was hanging out with the boys in training camp, studying films on my opponent, walking down the aisle toward the ring. There was no place I would rather have been. I think a lot about those times. When I watch any of my fights on television I can recall precisely what I was thinking and feeling. I can be sugary, yet those times can't compare to the contentment in my soul at this stage of my life. I beat the toughest opponent of all, myself." Honestly, it was a great round up, it's a great full circle. I loved reading this book again, it made me appreciate it so much more than I already did. The person in the world saw this Polish charming, unbeatable guy was real, but it was only half the story. The other half was a kid from Maryland, from Palmer Park. who grew up surrounded by violence outside his house, inside his house, between his parents, with his brothers and then he found control in the one place that made sense and that was the ring and then he spent decades fighting an opponent no one in the crowd could even see, it wasn't Roberto Duran, Marvin Hagler, Tommy Hearns it was himself and he beat that opponent too and that was Sugar Ray Leonard. So I want to end it there, thank you for listening, ⁓ please tune in for my next episode. That's One Legend Down. The work continues.