Robinson, Sugar Ray 1921–1989

Sugar Ray Robinson 1921–1989

Professional boxer

“As Sweet As Sugar”

Wins First World Title

A Change of Weight Class

A Fighter in His Prime

Retirement Stopped by Money Problems

Sources

It is a testament to Sugar Ray Robinson’s greatness as a boxer that when people discuss who was the greatest boxer of all-time, pound-for-pound, not only is no one else usually picked, but rarely is anyone else even considered. Robinson dominated first the welterweight and then the middleweight divisions at a time when boxing’s popularity was at its peak, and his skills were so widely admired that famed boxing writer Bert Sugar once wrote that being knocked out by Robinson “was more of an honor than a disgrace.”

Robinson was born Walker Smith, Jr. on May 3, 1921 in Detroit. He grew up poor in the Black Bottom section of that city. In 1932 his father, Walker Sr., and his mother Leila were divorced, and the elder Walker left the family. Leila took Ray and his sisters to New York, where she looked for work. Young Walker had tried boxing at the Brewster gym back in Detroit, and he pursued the sport in earnest once in New York. His manager, George Gainford, ran the gym Smith trained at as an amateur, and remembered the first time Smith came to his gym. “I told Smitty he was too young to fight,” he recalled in Harry Carpenter’s book, Masters of Boxing “Besides, he said his ma would kill him if he got mixed up with the fight game. So I chased him away from the gym, back to delivering groceries and dancing for dimes. But he turned up again. I took him into my home, taught him a few tricks and let him stay around when I took my team round the clubs.… I smacked him down more than once. Smitty deserved his breaks, though. In those days he had nothing.”

“As Sweet As Sugar”

A turning point in the legend of Sugar Ray Robinson came one night in Kingston, New York, when Smith was 15. Gainford was short one boxer for a show, and decided to use Smith. Since New York state law forbade anyone under the age of 16 to box, however, Smith needed fake credentials. Gainford happened to have in his pocket the fight card of one Ray Robinson. Smith fought under that name that night, and he would never be known as anything else for the rest of his career. The rest of his name was coined in Watertown, New York, when a reporter observed to Gainford that Robinson was “as sweet as sugar,” the trainer concurred. The fighter was briefly known as Ray (Sugar) Robinson, until it was decided Sugar Ray sounded better.

At a Glance…

Born Walker Smith, Jr., May 3, 1921, in Detroit, Ml; son of Walker Smith, Sr. and Leila Smith. Married three times: second wife Edna M. Holly, from 1943-60; third wife Millie Johnson, from 1965-89. Died April 12, J 1989.

Career: Professional boxer, 1940-65. Welterweight world champion, 1946-51; middleweight world champion five times, 1951, 1951-52, 1955, 1957, 1958-60. Inducted to Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990.

Robinson won the New York Golden Gloves championship at featherweight (126 pounds) in 1939 and lightweight (135 pounds) in 1940. Some historians claim he was never beaten as an amateur, although others say he lost twice. On October 4, 1940, Robinson turned professional with a bout at Madison Square Garden. The 19-year old stopped a fighter named Joe Echevarría in the second round, and his winning streak extended through the first 40 fights and 28 months of his professional career. Twenty-nine of those early victims failed to go the distance with Robinson, including world-ranked welterweights such as Pete Lello, Fritzie Zivic, Norman Rubio, Tony Motisi and Izzy Jannazzo.

Robinson’s first professional winning streak came to a close, and one of his most lasting rivalries was born, on February 5, 1943 in Detroit. He lost a 10-round decision to Jake LaMotta, a fighter he had beaten the previous fall in another 10-round decision in New York. Three weeks after losing to LaMotta, Robinson beat him in another rematch in Detroit. The second fight between the two was the only one of six LaMotta would ever win, but his status as the first fighter ever to beat Robinson was a major facet of his reputation for years to come. The LaMotta-Robinson series has gone down in history as one of the sport’s great rivalries.

Robinson fought at a pace that would be unheard of today. It was not unusual for him to fight twice within the span of a week, and in 1941 alone he fought an amazing 20 times, including two fights in August just two days apart. His schedule slowed in 1943, when he had just six fights, and ground to a halt in late summer, when he began a stint in the U.S. Army. The first bit of controversy in Robinson’s career stemmed from that army hitch. The army was letting high-profile boxers, most notably Joe Louis, avoid combat duty by fighting exhibition bouts for troops overseas. When Robinson’s boxing unit set sail, however, he did not show up. He was awarded an honorary discharge, and later claimed to have fallen down a flight of stairs and suffered amnesia, but some in the press held a grudge against Robinson long afterward.

Wins First World Title

Robinson resumed his busy fight schedule in the fall of 1944, and built another win streak, winning five fights before that year was out, nine in 1945 and 16 in 1946. It was in the last fight in 1946 in which Robinson won his first world title. He had run his record to 74-1 by the time the National Boxing Association (the forerunner of the present-day World Boxing Association) granted him a fight against Tommy Bell for the vacant world welterweight championship. Robinson won the fight on a 15-round decision and his days as a champion boxer had begun.

Robinson stayed fit with four non-title bouts early in 1947, then put his title on the line for the first time against Jimmy Doyle on June 24. In what sounds like legend but is actually fact, Robinson dreamed the night before the fight that he would kill Doyle with a left hook. Robinson was shaken by the dream and tried to pull out of the fight, but the promoters called in a Catholic priest to reassure him that his worries were unwarranted and that he must go through with the fight. In the eighth round, just as in the dream, Robinson hit Doyle with a devastating left hook. Doyle was carried from the ring on a stretcher and died the next day without ever regaining consciousness. At the coroner’s inquest Robinson was asked if he knew Doyle was hurt, and he replied, as quoted by Carpenter, “It’s my business to keep fighters in trouble when they’re hurt.” Leila Smith later said she believed her son was traumatized throughout his life by the incident.

Robinson did not let the tragedy slow him down, however, and he won five more fights, all by knockout, before the year was over. One was a title defense against Chuck Taylor, and he won five more fights and one more title defense in 1948. He fought 13 times in 1949, gaining 12 wins and a draw—the draw coming in a non-title bout with Henry Brimm—and won his only title defense that year against Kid Gavilán in Philadelphia. He stepped up the pace in 1950, fighting 19 bouts and winning them all, including a title defense against Charley Fusari.

In 1950 Robinson made another career move, moving up to middleweight and winning the Pennsylvania middleweight title. He defended that title twice, never going to the full middleweight limit of 160 pounds, but hovering around the mid-150s and fighting larger men, something Robinson was never afraid to do. In November and December he held his first tour of Europe, something that sounds odd today when fighters rarely box more than four or five times in a year. He won non-title fights in France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany, before setting his sights on the world middleweight title.

To win that prize Robinson needed to reacquaint himself with an old rival. He had already beaten Jake LaMotta four times in five fights, but since they had last fought over five years earlier, LaMotta had gone on to win the NBA middleweight title. Their fight on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1951, was their sixth meeting, but the first in which a crown was at stake. Robinson gradually took control over the first half of the fight, and over the last several rounds he pounded LaMotta with one of the most savage beatings in the history of the sport until the doctor at ringside called for the fight to be halted in the 13th round. Because the fight had been held in Chicago, the boxing writers who were there decreed the fight “another Valentine’s Day Massacre.” The fight was recreated in the 1980 Martin Scorcese film bio of LaMotta, “Raging Bull,” with Robert DeNiro as LaMotta, following Robinson around the ring after the fight’s conclusion taunting, “You never got me down, Ray. You never got me down.” The win marked the end of Robinson’s reign as the welterweight champion, what some have called his prime period, but started a longer career in the middleweight ranks.

A Change of Weight Class

Robinson’s career could not have come at a better time in history for him to be a big star. Before World War II and since Vietnam boxing was not widely popular, and widespread attention was usually only granted to contenders in the heavyweight division. But from the late 1940s until the mid 1960s boxing, an easy sport to televise, was a staple on prime-time television, sometimes being broadcast as many as four times a week. With so much boxing being televised, weight classes below heavyweight necessarily had to receive more exposure, and during the heyday of televised boxing Sugar Ray Robinson was one of the sport’s top stars.

Before defending his middleweight title in 1951, Robinson made another tour of Europe, and won all his bouts except for one in Germany. He almost started a riot by knocking out German hero Gerhard Hecht, allegedly with kidney punches, a punch that was legal in the United States but not in Europe. He was initially disqualified, and had to hide under the ring when angry fans began pelting him with bottles. It was later discovered that Hecht had a broken rib, though, and the decision was changed to a no-contest.

His last fight on the tour was a title defense against Randy Turpin in London, and an unprepared Robinson lost his title on a 15-round decision. Carpenter remembered Robinson explaining, “I was never hit with so many jabs in my life and I couldn’t do a thing about it. I was sold out because of the travelling. My eyes were tired and couldn’t focus properly.” Two months later a better-prepared Robinson fought a rematch against Turpin, and he regained the title before 60,000 fans at New York’s Polo Grounds when he knocked Turpin out with one of his classic left hooks.

Robinson took a year off from non-title fights in 1952, fighting only three times and defending his title against two strong challengers, Bobo Olson and Rocky Graziano. Then, on June 25, he fought what many fans consider to be one of his best fights, a fight he actually lost, for Joey Maxim’s light-heavyweight title. Robinson made no attempt to bulk up to the light-heavyweight limit of 175 pounds, fighting instead at his natural weight of 157 and giving away almost 20 pounds. The fight was held on the hottest night of the year in New York City. It was 104 degrees at ringside, and about 140 degrees under the ring lights. Spectators were passing out in the crowd. Robinson outboxed the bigger, stronger man every step of the way, and was far ahead on all the scorecards, needing only to finish the fight to become the third man in boxing history (along with Henry Armstrong and Bob Fitzsimmons) to win the title in three weight classes.

The heat took its toll, though, and Maxim wore Robinson down by leaning on him with his greater weight throughout the fight. Even referee Ruby Goldstein suffered heat exhaustion and had to be replaced after the 10th round, but Robinson stayed strong—until the 13th round. Then he tired visibly and at one point in the round, when Maxim stepped back away from a Robinson hook, Robinson fell right to the canvas on his follow-through. At the end of the round Robinson was almost delirious and had to be helped back to his corner by his handlers, who tried frantically to revive him for the last two rounds. When the bell sounded for the start of the 14th, however, Robinson could not stand up, and his only fight for the light-heavyweight title went down in history as a near-miss. It was also the only fight of his career in which he failed to complete the match.

A Fighter in His Prime

Winning his third title was the last real goal Robinson had left. Carpenter quoted him as saying prior to the Maxim fight, “The papers say I do everything for Ray Robinson first. That could be. I see a lot of bad in boxing. I see a lot of fighters finished and broke. I don’t want that for me. I want to come out with money. I don’t want to keep fighting like Joe Louis. “After losing to Maxim, Robinson said goodbye to boxing, and started a career as a song-and-dance man. Some say Robinson’s reputation would be even greater than it is today if he had stayed retired, but between bad business investments, tax problems and extravagant spending habits, he was faced with no other choice by 1955 than to return to boxing.

After his return to boxing, Robinson was never again the unbeatable force he had been during his prime, but he still had some of his most memorable fights during this period. After winning five of six fights during the early part of 1955, Robinson was given a shot against the middleweight champ, whom he had beaten for the title in 1952. This time he knocked Bobo Olson out in the second round, and again in a rematch early in 1956. Robinson now held the middleweight title for the third time.

Robinson was often resented by his contemporaries for defending his interests at the bargaining table as determinedly as he defended his titles in the ring. Since early in his career he had earned a reputation as a ruthless businessman, and many fighters whose careers would have been well-served by a fight with Robinson were frustrated that he refused to sign to fight anyone who would not agree to terms that were heavily lopsided in Robinson’s favor.

It was not only fighters who found Robinson a formidable opponent in money disputes. Even the rule that allows federal income taxes to be computed based on average earnings over a number of years sprang from a confrontation between Robinson and the Internal Revenue Service. But as champion Robinson was especially aggressive in pursuing his own financial interests. A typical Robinson fight contract dictated that Robinson got the much larger portion of the gate and most or all of the money from television. It also dictated that if the challenger won, he had to give Robinson a rematch with his next fight and Robinson would get most of the money from that fight, too. It was that contractually mandated rematch which would serve him the best in the late 1950s.

On the second day of 1957 Robinson lost his title on a decision to Gene Fullmer, a Mormon from Utah. On the first day of May that year, however, the two met again, and Robinson regained his title with a fifth-round knockout on which many boxing historians consider his best-ever punch. A left hook that came from nowhere landed flush on Fullmer’s jaw and sent him staggering backwards toward the canvas, then left him futilely trying to drag himself back to his feet. Fullmer said in an interview years later that he did not even know he’d been knocked out until his cornermen told him as he sat on his stool some minutes later. Robinson now held the title for the fourth time.

In September of that year, Robinson lost his title on a decision to the great fighter Carmen Basilio. Basilio harbored a great deal of dislike for Robinson, and the two had a true rivalry by the time they met in their rematch on March 25, 1958. Many observers of the fight game thought this was the night when Robinson would truly look his age, and Basilio would finish off the old champ’s career as a viable contender once and for all. But Basilio was troubled from about the sixth round on with a badly swollen eye, and Robinson won a brutal fight with a 15-round decision. He had to be carried from the ring to the dressing room, from the dressing room to his Cadillac, and from the car to his hotel room, but he had won the middleweight championship for a fifth time.

Retirement Stopped by Money Problems

Robinson was nearing 40 now, but he still could not afford to retire from boxing. Part of it was because of his back taxes. But Robinson had also become accustomed to a fairly extravagant lifestyle, which had also become a defining aspect of his image. He had bought for himself over the years a bar, three Harlem apartment buildings, a cleaning and dyeing shop, and a lingerie shop (the latter for his wife—the former Edna Mae Holly, to whom he was married from 1943-60; he had been married briefly to another woman as a teenager, but details are sketchy). The traveling entourage for Robinson consisted of his wife; Gainford, his manager; a male secretary; three trainers; a golf pro; a personal barber; an odd-job man; a chauffeur; and a midget court jester. They carried 100 pieces of luggage among them, and it cost about $3,000 a week to support the lot of them.

Robinson had tried to protect his public image early in his career, donating portions of, and sometimes whole purses, to charity, including Jimmy Doyle’s widow, but as his career progressed he became increasingly unconcerned about his reputation where money was involved. The New York Times Book of Sports Legends recalled Robinson saying, “I went through $4 million, but I have no regrets. If I had the chance to do it over again, I’d do it the same way. I didn’t gamble away my money. I used it to help people live. I took my family and my friends on trips with me. I loaned it to strangers to pay their bills, and sometimes I didn’t get it back.”

Robinson went into a period of inactivity in 1959, fighting only one tune-up fight in December. The NBA stripped Robinson of his title for not defending it, but other jurisdictions continued to recognize him as the champion until he lost that distinction to Paul Pender in Boston in January 1960. He had, of course, written a rematch clause into his contract for the fight, but in June he lost that fight as well. In December he fought for the NBA title, but Fullmer retained that title on a draw. There was one last attempt at Fullmer’s championship the following year, but the champ kept his title on a decision, and Robinson, despite fighting 46 more times over the next five years, never again fought for the world championship. He finally retired in 1965 with a career record of 175 wins, 19 defeats, six draws and two no-contests.

That same year Robinson married his third wife, the former Millie Wiggins Bruce, who was several years older than he was. They lived in Los Angeles, where Ray established the Sugar Ray Robinson Youth Foundation, an organization that funded and organized recreational activities for young people. Ray continued to work out until the mid 1970s, when his age began to take its toll. In the late 1970s a young fighter named Ray Leonard began using the old “Sugar Ray” nickname; some close to Robinson speculated that he must have resented the young fighter usurping his moniker, but for the record, at least, Robinson gave Leonard his blessing.

In the 1980s, as Alzheimer’s Disease, a common malady among boxers with long careers, took hold of Robinson, Millie’s side of the family took control of the youth foundation. Family members, such as Ray’s mother and son (Ray Jr., whom he had with Edna Mae), expressed distrust of Millie and resentment at her refusal to let anyone, even them, see Ray. For her part, she insisted that the two of them were proud people and that as his wife it was her responsibility to protect him and keep anyone from seeing him in his compromised and vulnerable condition. Ray died on April 12, 1989.

In 1997, as part of its 75th anniversary, Ring magazine picked the best fighter pound-for-pound of the last 75 years. The three finalists were Robinson, Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali. Robinson was picked as the winner, which came as no surprise to anyone. Louis had said decades earlier that he thought Robinson was the greatest fighter in the world, and Ali had said in 1975, as quoted in African-American Sports Greats, “I believe I am the greatest heavyweight of all time, but Ray Robinson was the greatest fighter of all time.” Nearly sixty years after he first put on the gloves, Sugar Ray Robinson was still the sweetest.

Sources

Books

African-American Sports Greats: A Biographical Dictionary, edited by David L. Porter, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995, p. 286.

The Boxing Register: International Boxing Hall of Fame Official Record Book, by James B. Roberts and Alexander G. Skutt, Ithaca, NY: McBooks Press, 1997, p. 358.

The Encyclopedia of Boxing, compiled by Maurice Goldsworthy, p. 171.

Masters of Boxing, by Harry Carpenter, p. 51.

The New York Times Book of Sports Legends, edited by Joseph J. Vecchione, New York: Random House, 1991, p. 264.

Periodicals

Sports Illustrated, July 13, 1987, p. 70; April 24, 1989, p. 96.

—Mike Eggert