Pound for Pound Page 21

  Even after it was widely known that Carbo virtually controlled the New York State Athletic Commission and promoter Mike Jacobs, Sugar was not impressed. Then again, he had to acknowledge that the mob’s dominance of the fight game was killing his chances at climbing legitimately to the top of the ranks. There were rumors that even his longtime associate, Joe Louis, had become “friendly” with the mob. To be sure, the mob was circling him like rabid wild dogs, but that was about as close as Sugar would allow them.

  “Sugar always liked to be surrounded by a bunch of gangsters and members of the mob,” said actor Johnny Barnes, who at fifteen began dreaming of one day playing Sugar in a movie and got his wish in 1979, trading fake punches with Robert De Niro in Raging Bull. “He liked their company, but he never got involved with them, and he was never arrested or convicted of any wrongdoing. Furthermore, Sugar Ray infuriated the mob and promoters because he insisted on negotiating his own contracts. The lawyers who accompanied him were only there to read the contract and to make sure everything he wanted was enclosed; that was their only purpose. Ray said he could talk for his own money. When it came to money, Ray was a hard bargainer. If you wanted to interview him or take his picture, more than likely you had to pay.”

  Because he was his own man when it came to cutting a deal with promoters, Sugar was ostracized for almost six years in New York City, Barnes said. “That’s why he had so many of his fights in Chicago from about 1941 to 1947,” he added. And once the owners and promoters at Madison Square Garden—Jim Norris and Mike Jacobs—“blacklisted” Sugar, all the other arenas followed suit.1 This was not completely true. Between 1942 and 1946, when he fought Tommy Bell and defeated him for the vacated welterweight title, Sugar had more than ten fights in New York City, though his appearances at the Garden were indeed limited.

  Still, Barnes was not mistaken about Sugar’s negotiating his own contracts and demanding to be paid whenever he thought he had something coming. “I want to tell you,” Sugar told reporter/author Peter Heller, “if I was due a dollar, I felt I wanted that dollar. If I could help a man make a dollar, I thought I deserved a part of it. And I took a stand to get that, and if they didn’t pay me I didn’t fight.”2 According to writer Jack Newfield, Sugar was “the Curt Flood of fighters,” in that he was difficult to negotiate with and drove a hard bargain to get what he wanted before signing a contract. “It was this determination that led him to demand a cut of the film, radio, and television money…to get the money up front,” Newfield said.

  There wasn’t much money for Sugar to get up front in his bout with an unknown Art Hernandez in the summer of 1964 in Omaha. That nobody in boxing circles had heard of Hernandez and that the fight was taking place in Omaha and not one of the major arenas was indicative of Sugar’s plight. He had fallen off the charts, and there was no point in his applying the hard negotiating tactics that had made him such a pain in the neck to the big-time promoters in New York City. Getting Hernandez to ink a contract took little cajoling; he was just as eager to get a payday as the star of the main event. But although it was a breeze to get Hernandez’s name on the dotted line, it proved much tougher to line him up for one of his patented hooks, Sugar learned. They fought to a draw.

  With few lucrative fights on the horizon, Sugar had to look beyond it all the way to Europe. Beginning in the fall of 1964, he lined up several fights, most of them fodder and thus commanding very little payoff. Even so, it was better than anything on paper in the States.

  As he prepared to venture to Europe for the fifth time, this time with a scaled-down retinue, Edna Mae had just about wilted under a blitz of financial woes. The setbacks had come one right after the other, each one more devastating, like Sugar’s deadly blows. The coup de grace came when she learned that both of the banks she did business with—Carver Federal Savings and Loan Association and Manufacturers Trust Company—had been ordered by the U.S. Treasury Department and the IRS to secure $267,724.11 from her accounts. The notice of levy from

  the IRS indicated that income tax owed covered a four-year period from 1957 to 1961, excluding 1958. Taxes owed in 1959 were particularly startling, totaling $122,203.97.

  “My God!” she exclaimed. “We had no such amounts, but our accounts were emptied and given to the IRS and the accounts closed out. I was in total shock for days. I remembered that a similar seizure had been done to Joe Louis’s children.” And like the Louis family’s, her lifestyle was altered dramatically. She was no longer able to maintain even a semblance of her former life—the trips across the country were curtailed; the seemingly unlimited shopping at the major stores, the dining at luxurious restaurants and clubs and not having to worry about the cost were a thing of the past. Her son began to blame her for the changes in their life after she divorced Sugar. “I’d never confuse him by talking against his dad,” she said. “The child was already beginning to show deep-seated hostility to me.”

  When Sugar returned from Europe toward the end of November 1964, having vanquished most of his opponents—compiling a record of five victories, one defeat, and one draw—he arrived just in time to celebrate Christmas, and there were even some presents for his ex-wife and child. After the visit, Ray II accompanied his father to the car, with Edna Mae watching them from the window as they walked along holding hands. She had lost her husband; now she pondered if she was losing her son, too. When Ray returned to the house and walked in the door, he didn’t say a word to his mother. The remaining days of the holiday season were glum for Edna Mae. There was now more than enough time to rethink the moves she had made, to reexamine her relationship with Sugar’s mother, who, she heard through the grapevine, was no longer resentful of her, telling whoever would listen how kind and good-mannered Edna Mae was. “Her appreciation of me had come too late,” Edna Mae wrote.

  During Sugar’s last trip to Paris, there were news clips of him with Millie and his sister, Evelyn, who had recently joined Sugar’s ever-shrinking crew. To see Sugar and the women being smothered by an adoring mob of Parisians only made Edna Mae more miserable, and she would do all she could to avoid such reports. But the photos in the newspapers and magazines would sometimes catch her by surprise, as it must have in 1985 when Sugar came to New York to be honored along with other boxing legends. A photograph of Sugar and Millie, her arms draped over his shoulders, appeared in the Daily News, and it was later found among Edna Mae’s collection of memorabilia. Nowhere in her notes or memoir does she discuss how these moments made her feel.

  Caught in a time warp, reminiscing her days and nights away, she tried dating to break out of the doldrums and to end the loneliness. “I began to have invitations to so many lovely affairs from eligible males that my ego was greatly improved at the thought that I was being so sought after,” she said. At last, she began to enjoy her new freedom, especially when she was invited out to go ballroom dancing, which she loved so much. Because Sugar had visiting privileges to see his son, he would frequently drop by the house, often unannounced. There were several occasions when he confronted one of Edna Mae’s suitors, and inevitably that would end the courtship, most of the men choosing not to be the victim of Sugar’s venom or fists. She also had to endure the pleadings of her son, and his demands that she not go out with other men. He didn’t want Edna Mae to go out again “because if you do then my daddy can never come back home.” To salvage her relationship with her son, she put off for the moment any serious dating, fearing that to do so would only anger her son and increase the possibility of permanent rupture between them. “The trauma and heartbreak of losing one parent had been frightening to our son,” she confessed to herself.

  There was little time for Sugar to contemplate what was going on between his ex-wife and their son, when he thought of them at all. Toward the end of his autobiography, they began to slowly fade from the pages, as Millie assumed a greater importance in his life. She kept his mind focused on the remaining few fights of his career, providing the mental support that Edna Mae had once provided. One f
ight he was particularly focused on was the one with Jimmy Beecham, slated for March 1965 in Kingston, Jamaica. This was the third time he would fight in the Caribbean, but the first time in Jamaica. Getting a good fight anywhere was becoming harder and harder for the ex-champ, no matter that he was the once glorious and glamorous Sugar Ray Robinson.

  Having lost some of his appeal in the ring, Sugar felt compelled to reconcile with Muhammad Ali, asking him to serve in his corner as a second. With Ali by his side, he hoped, more spectators would be attracted to the fight. Sugar knocked Beecham out in the second round. Ali was so busy trying to get his new wife, Sonji, to adjust to the lifestyle prescribed by the Nation of Islam that in his autobiography, The Greatest, he talks more about his fights with her than about Sugar’s bout.

  It got so bad between the couple that Sugar had to come to Sonji’s rescue. Upset that Sonji’s miniskirt kept crawling up her leg during a party for Sugar at some large estate in Kingston, Muhammad snatched her by the arm and marched her off to a bathroom, where he locked the door and released all his hostility. He pulled on her dress; but in his trying to stretch it, it tore. This fueled Sonji’s resistance, and they became so loud that Sugar came to the door to see what was happening. “This is my wife and this is my business, so get away from the damn door,” Ali screamed to Sugar. But Sugar said he wasn’t going anywhere until he found out what was going on. “Listen, I’m gonna open this door in a second, and if you ain’t gone, I’m gonna whip you good,” Ali warned. “You ain’t nothing but a middleweight, so go on, mind your own business.” Sugar heeded Ali’s command, realizing that if he were to knock the door down and confront Ali, it might be a worse mismatch than his fight with Joey Maxim. When Ali finally opened the door, the couple came out sheepishly, embarrassed by the incident. This was the beginning of the end for them as a pair, and in a few days, Sonji slipped away from Ali as he prepared for his return bout with Liston.

  CHAPTER 28

  A BLOODY BRIDEGROOM

  Sugar and his team knew it was time to put together an impressive string of victories over worthy opponents if he were to get another championship shot. There were three more fairly convincing victories for the aging fighter. “I had turned forty-four,” Sugar stated. “If my chance came, I had to be ready. I arranged a trip to Honolulu, for a fight with Stan Harrington.” Harrington was of Irish, Hawaiian, and English ancestry, and his face, it was reported, resembled ten miles of rough road. “On the way, I had another one (fight) scheduled in a bull ring in Tijuana, Mexico, with a Mexican mailman, Memo Ayon. The dust from the dirt streets is in the air in Tijuana. As I sweated, I felt the grime forming on me.” Sugar was so concerned about keeping the dust from caking up the pores of his body that he paid little attention to Ayon’s banging away at his head. When it was over, Ayon was given the decision. Sugar believed the decision was one of the most unfair and one-sided of his career.

  After the fight, he and Millie left town immediately, driving all night to Los Angeles. Their destination was Millie’s apartment, where she lived upstairs over her uncle and aunt. But Sugar suddenly changed his mind. “We’re going to Las Vegas,” he told her. It was time for them to get married, he insisted. They drove to the Los Angeles International Airport and got the next flight to Las Vegas. From McCarren Field, they took a cab downtown to the marriage license bureau. With the license in hand, their next stop was the chapel near the Sands Hotel. Sugar wore his sunglasses to conceal his identity; he didn’t want any publicity. On May 25, 1965, they were married.

  Rather than proceeding on to Honolulu as they had planned, the newlyweds flew back to New York City. Sugar had something else on his mind: his son. Edna Mae was no longer living in Riverdale. Not only was she unable to keep the maintenance on the house—and even worse, her garden—but the burglary had spooked her and she was afraid to be there after dark. “It was then that I decided to move out of the area,” she said. “Sugar’s lawyer encouraged me to do so by offering to find a good man to act as agent for me to find a buyer for the house. Manhattan College owned the property next to me and they wanted my property in order to expand their school’s advanced science programs.”

  But there was a snag in the process: Sugar’s agent, who was mainly there to protect his client’s interest. Whatever money Sugar could siphon from the deal would help defray his enormous tax debt. When one of Edna Mae’s real estate friends heard the property was for sale, he made her an offer larger than the one proposed by Manhattan College. Sugar was bitter when he was told of the new arrangement, which threatened to cut his agent, and thereby his commission, out of the deal. His bullying tactics succeeded, and Edna Mae signed the papers with his agent to negotiate the sale of the house. “When the sale was completed,” she continued, “the IRS, mortgage holders, and the agent were paid, and all that was left for me was a little over $23,000.” As if she hadn’t gone through enough heartache, Sugar’s lawyer summoned her to his office and snatched an additional five hundred dollars for his services and to provide a small bonus for the tax agent.

  Edna Mae was devastated. “It was like robbery without a gun,” she said. With very little time to sell her furniture from the patio, the yard, and the bar, she alerted all of her friends to hurry on over and take what they wanted. They came in droves, even pulling up the immaculate shrubbery and other plants decorating the estate.

  Edna Mae found a large apartment on the west side of Manhattan with three bedrooms, a large kitchen and pantry, a spacious living room, and a hall that could serve as an additional room. In this way, she was able to keep most of her furniture, and more important, the large apartment would make it easier for her son to adjust to the new living quarters. “I still had my car,” she said with a sigh, “but I learned that if I tried to renew my license and registration the Tax Department would seize it also for tax payments, so I sold it for only a thousand dollars, to our chauffeur. Sugar had insisted that if I sold it, to paint it another color to prevent anyone from having his famous flamingo color. I didn’t have a dime to waste and thought our loyal employee deserved the car. Anyway, a local Harlemite had already copied the color and would brazenly park it right in front of Sugar’s café, so I decided one more couldn’t hurt.” Others have noted that whenever Sugar traded for a new car, he paid to have the old one painted another color so that whoever purchased the used car could not be mistaken for him.

  Back from the West Coast, Sugar dropped by the apartment to inform his son that he had remarried. Ray II, now seventeen, was very upset by the recent developments. Their home had been sold, he had left behind his friends in Riverdale, and now his father had broken the news that he’d remarried. Perhaps to appease his heartbroken son, Sugar came back to the apartment a few days later and asked Edna Mae if Ray could go with him to Honolulu. “For a moment I was speechless,” she remembered. “If I said no, the child would never forgive me. I answered of course I’d let him go.” Besides, she had been taking Ray to the beach so that he could practice surfing. Now, he could demonstrate his skills on the giant waves of Hawaii. In a few days they were off, and Edna Mae was a bundle of mixed feelings, happy and sad at the same time. It would not be the last time she would be so intensely conflicted.

  What little honeymoon the newlyweds had coming took a backseat to Sugar’s bout with Stan Harrington in Honolulu. Sugar had to enjoy the picturesque landscapes and cobalt blue oceans through puffed-up eyes. Harrington was a lot more than Sugar had expected. “He busted me up over the eye, with a butt, and he got the decision. I was a bloody bridegroom,” he said.

  CHAPTER 29

  POUND FOR POUND

  Edna Mae had just waved good-bye to her son and watched him ride off with his father en route to the airport when she got a phone call from one of Sugar’s former associates. He was irate and blabbering all kinds of nonsense about Sugar and what he was going to do to him if he didn’t get the money he was owed. “He was very distraught,” she stated. “He said he had gone to Sugar’s office and asked for some of
his money. He told Sugar that his bills were piling up, yet whenever Sugar traveled, he would inevitably have an entourage. He knew that was costing Sugar big money, but that he also needed money, and immediately.” He told her that Sugar spoke to him like he was nothing but a piece of trash. The angry associate felt he had been used and abused by Sugar.

  “I went back later that night and I saw him go into his office alone,” Edna Mae said the man told her. “I followed him into the office and locked the door. I forced him at gunpoint to open the safe, but there was no money in it. I told him that if anyone else had treated me like he did and spoken to me like he did that day, I’d have killed them.” He said that he kept the gun pressed against Sugar’s head, while he begged for his life. Sugar’s life was spared, but as soon as he left the office, Sugar called the police.

  The man told Edna Mae that he knew Sugar was going to the airport to take a flight to Hawaii, “but the plane will never get off the ground.” After he hung up the phone, she called the airport to see if Sugar and Ray had boarded and if the plane was in flight. They were still waiting to board when she reached her ex-husband. Sugar told her that the flight had been delayed because of a report that there might be a bomb on the plane. She was a nervous wreck until the plane finally landed safely in Hawaii.

  Sugar rarely mentions any of his sparring mates in his autobiography, but much of his sharpness in a fight can be attributed to a stable of fighters who often took a beating to get him ready. “Two of them stand out in my mind,” said boxing aficionado Clint Edwards of the sparring partners who helped Sugar sharpen his skills and plot his moves. “Dino Woodard and Danny “Bang Bang” Womber. They could throw plenty of leather. Bang Bang eventually ended up working in Sugar’s barbershop, the Golden Glover. He was the process man who ‘gassed’ the hair of all the pimps and players who came through. Duke Ellington, B. B. King, a number of big-name entertainers with a ‘do’ patronized Sugar’s shop. And there was Gene Burton, who was not a sparring partner but Sugar’s stablemate. They banged each other around in several exhibition bouts. Naw, he wasn’t like the other ‘opponents’ who padded Sugar’s resume.”1