| Sugar Ray Robinson Sugar Ray Robinson. Born Walker Smith Jr but for eternity will always be the original sugarman. The God of all fighters, a dazzling icon. Others have tried to approach his status and all have fallen short. Sugar Ray Robinson. Just say it outloud. It comes off the tongue like poetry. Skills as sweet as candy. Fast, flashy, a treasure trove of glimmering, shimmering brilliance. The American in the pink Cadillac. As a male I would say he was ss good-looking as a man can be without going outside my hetrosexual boundaries! Pound-for-pound the best boxer that ever walked the planet. Not my opinion: it belongs to the one and only Joe Louis. And if Joe Louis said the world was flat then scientists would have to re-evalute their conclusions. To see Louis talk about another boxer as the best pound-for-pound boxer he had ever seen kind of takes the breath away. Make no mistake, those who have come after Sugar Ray and laid claim to that title only do so precisely because they have come after. Just because it is now a distant time and can only be witnessed in flickering, ghostlike film doesn't mean anyone who came after was better; it just means we can see them better. The advent of colour, the advent of TV, heroes in our boxes, in our homes, every generation throwing up the best pound-for-pound fighter. Sugar Ray Leonard was not the best just because he was in colour. Take a step back and recall the man forever in black and white. What he did, how he did it, means you will realise he is the man. Occupation: Boxing Icon Rated at: Height: 5 ft 11 in (1.80 m) Boxing record THE IMMORTAL MORTAL: The facts are thus: as an amateur fighter, he was 85-0, with 69 by way of knockout. He turned professional in 1940 and by 1951 had won 128 fights out of 131. He held the world welterweight title from 1946 to 1951, the first to win a divisional world championship five times. He died in poverty in 1989 after spending or losing the $4 million he made from boxing. A life in a few sentences. But to see the flickering images of him fighting can words ever be enough? The supremely quick, devastating punching is hard to convey with words. You just have to see it. As an amateur he won the Golden Gloves featherweight title. He turned professional in 1940 and won the welterweight championship in 1946 by defeating Tommy Bell. The middleweight championship came in 1951 by knocking out his nemesis Jake La Motta (Raging Bull and who he beat five times out of six). Robinson retired from boxing as middleweight champion in 1952. Up to then he had lost only three times in 137 bouts. Incredible record. How the heck do you get yourself up to fight so many times in such a short space of time? He returned to boxing in 1955 and became the first boxer ever to regain a title after retiring. Three years later he became the first man in boxing history to win a divisional (weight class) world championship five times when he regained the middleweight title in 1958 by defeating Carmen Basilio; he lost the title in 1960 to Paul Pender. Basilio carried an acute dislike for Robinson throughout his life based on some slight. But Robinson seemed so polite in his pre and post fight conferences that it is hard to think of him as anything other than a gentleman. I love Basilio though, just the way he gave every fibre of his being when he fought. Paul Page, December, 2012 SWEET THUNDER OF THE DAZZLE MAN: Born Walker Smith Jr. in 1921, Robinson’s early childhood was marked by the seething racial tensions and explosive race riots that infected the Midwest throughout the twenties and thirties. After his mother moved him and his sisters to the relative safety of Harlem, he came of age in the vibrant post-Renaissance years. It was there that--encouraged to box by his mother, who wanted him off the streets--he soon became a rising star, cutting an electrifying, glamorous figure, riding around town in his famous pink Cadillac. Beyond the celebrity, though, Robinson would emerge as a powerful, often controversial black symbol in a rapidly changing America. If you had to pick defining moments in a life full of iconic definitions then his gruesome six-bout war with Jake “Raging Bull” LaMotta; his lethal meeting with Jimmy Doyle; the Harlem nightclub years and thwarted show-biz dreams. FURTHER READING: Further Reading: Pound for Pound: A Biography of Sugar Ray Robinson These prints are available @ ebay.com but even more exciting: Sugar Ray Robinson signed items @ ebay.com (direct link to signed items) - grab yourself a Sugar treasure |
