Pound for Pound Read online

  “Edna Mae was simply gorgeous,” recalled Delilah Jackson, who has diligently chronicled Harlem’s entertainment history for several decades in such local publications as the Amsterdam News and The Beacon. “All the men would stare and whistle at her when she walked down the street. She was every black man’s dream, with her light skin, long black hair that hung down her back, and beautiful legs. I knew many a man who would have thought they were in heaven to have her by the arm, strolling down 125th Street. The way she sashayed, throwing her shapely hips, she knew she was something special. I guess she had every reason to be vain. You could tell by the expression on her face that she just loved people noticing her. When I was with her, she loved to show off her legs. Even when she performed almost nude at Connie’s Inn in 1932, when she was about sixteen or seventeen, she was proud of her body. She used to show me pictures of her dressed in nothing at all. I have to admit she had a fantastic body. But she also had class, culture, and sophistication.”4

  Like most young men in Harlem, Clint Edwards, a photographer who followed Sugar’s career with a passion, was dazzled by Edna Mae’s beauty, but he was not so blinded that he couldn’t, at the same time, appreciate Sugar’s magnificent aura. He saw them as much on the streets as he saw them at the arenas. “There was no one like Sugar Ray,” he began. “Just about everything about him was unique. His style, the way he walked, the clothes he wore, the car he drove—all of that set him apart from the rest of us. He was always sharp as a tack. No matter where he went, there was a bunch of onlookers…Sugar would walk down the street in a colorful suit with a silk shirt, a mean hat, and his shoes were always shining. I know he had his own tailor, because you couldn’t buy the kind of clothes he wore off a rack, no way. And he was as arrogant as he could be. He was bad and he knew it.”5

  Sylvia Dixon, longtime Harlemite, recalls how “when they walked down the street together, they were like the prince and princess of Harlem. They were a matchless pair. In a way, they might have been meant for each other. It was like one was trying to outshine the other, and the light they created together was absolutely radiant. Whenever they walked into a room, all eyes focused on them. They seemed to reflect each other in so many ways; they were mirror images. And depending on the situation, they took turns soaking up the spotlight, reveling in that moment of attention. I don’t think they ever tired of this, though in time they seemed to have tired of each other. But while they were young and riding high, they were a unique duo. It’s a wonder they never made a movie together; I’m sure it would have been sensational, even better than Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge. Sugar Ray and Edna Mae—their names even rhymed. To some degree they were star-crossed lovers, like Romeo and Juliet, but that was part of their appeal, part of their magnetism. There may never be a couple like them again. They were…well, Sugar and Spice.”6

  On the return engagement with Zivic, on January 16, Sugar gave his foe a lesson in fisticuffs. He picked him apart with snappy jabs and crushing combinations that kept his slender opponent off balance. Sugar’s dominance was so overwhelming that even his mother, who often discussed what he did wrong in the ring, had to praise him. She was even more full of praise when she learned that her son had pocketed another big purse from the fight.

  Now that Sugar was beginning to make more money, he attracted elements of the underworld who sought to horn in on his good fortune. But it was not these menacing outsiders who thought nothing of showing Sugar that they were brandishing arms who worried him; it was the insiders, including Horrmann, his manager, who Sugar felt wasn’t getting the best deals on fights. Horrmann’s tendency to cave in to promoters during negotiations perturbed Sugar. Rather than demand what Sugar requested, he would make up the difference out of his own deep pockets. If the promoter welched on paying Sugar the contracted amount, Horrmann wouldn’t complain but instead would pay Sugar himself. This was no way to do business, charged Sugar, who even at twenty years of age was already showing an entrepreneurial sensibility. When he finally reached the breaking point, he borrowed ten thousand dollars from Mike Jacobs and bought his freedom from Horrmann. What had begun as a promising relationship was over before it had had a chance to mature. Sugar put a different spin on the break several years later in Sport magazine: “The way I understood it from his sister, who came to me to talk about it,” Sugar claimed, “his family thought he was spending too much time running around the country with me. Maybe they didn’t like the idea of his being a fight manager at all, I don’t know.”7

  Gainford thought he was in line to take over, but Sugar had other plans—he would become his own manager, keeping Gainford as his trainer. During Sugar’s amateur days, Gainford took the lion’s share of the bootleg payoffs, believing his fighters should be satisfied with whatever he paid them. Sugar no doubt remembered this when he denied Gainford the opportunity of becoming his manager. He would never underestimate Sugar again.

  Nor would any of the promoters. They found Sugar to be just as tough at the bargaining table as he was in the ring. Like an independent film director, Sugar reserved the rights of final cut; he would determine what the bottom line was. This was the attitude he evinced in preparation for a fight with the number one contender, Jake LaMotta, the “Raging Bull.” LaMotta, a rugged Italian-American from the Bronx, had compiled a fairly impressive record, though it was marred by four defeats. Even so, he was a powerful puncher who never took a step backward in the ring, plodding forward, his fists up by his head like horns. Moreover, he was a colorful crowd pleaser. He had gathered a reputation for his ability to deliver numbing body punches, but he could also take them. The Bull had never been knocked off his feet.

  Before taking on the Bull, Sugar had a few household matters to finalize. At the start of his professional career, Sugar had promised his mother a new house, and he lived up to that vow right after ending his relationship with Horrmann. “I paid eighty-five hundred dollars for a big brick ten-room on 238th Street in the Riverdale section of the Bronx,” he wrote in his autobiography. And before they moved in, another three thousand dollars were spent redecorating it. With the house purchased and ready to live in, Sugar had two other goals to accomplish: goring the Bronx Bull and corralling Edna Mae of Harlem.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE MATADOR AND THE BULL

  Sugar had three warm-up matches in the summer of 1942 before his fall date with the Bull. There was a return bout with Angott “the ingot” at the Garden, who once again went the distance but was tagged with another loss, and quick knockouts of Ruben Shank and Tony Motisi in August. The nation may have been experiencing a rationing of sugar, but the other Sugar was on a rampage, sharpening his jabs into lethal banderillas, his left hook into a potentially deadly sword to the Bull’s hefty neck. Months before the contest, sportswriters were hyping the fight as a classic showdown between a highly skilled boxer and a puncher with an iron jaw. This fight was important to both twenty-one-year-old boxers: The winner was almost guaranteed to move into contention for a title fight. LaMotta, like Sugar, was on a winning streak, twice besting Jimmy Edgar, a Joe Louis protégé.

  In his autobiography, LaMotta remembered the fight as occurring in the last week of September, but it actually took place October 2 in the Garden. Sugar’s memory was a little faulty too. He said LaMotta outweighed him by ten pounds; however, several accounts list LaMotta as fifteen pounds heavier. But there is no disputing the outcome—Sugar tore into the Bull like a piston, wearing him out with a crisp barrage of punches; in Sugar’s words, “My arms got weary from throwing so many punches.” After hundreds of smashes to his body and head, the Bull was still standing, still snorting, as he collapsed on the ropes, spouting imprecations. At the end of ten rounds of crisp punching from both fighters, the verdict was announced: Sugar had won his thirty-sixth consecutive fight as a pro, twenty-seven of them by knockouts. LaMotta had suffered his fourth defeat, and massive blows to his ego.

  Now that Sugar had conquered the Bull, the mob circled him like a flock o
f vultures. There were rumors they had already seduced LaMotta and fixed one of his fights. If Sugar was on the take in his match against Al Nettlow, it wasn’t evident during the fight. On December 14, 1942, “Sugar…was supposed to carry Al Nettlow for the full ten rounds of a fight in Philly,” Nick Tosches recounted in The Devil and Sonny Liston. “But in the third round, when Nettlow hit him with a nasty right, Ray lost his temper, hit him with a left hook, and Nettlow was counted out. That night, Ray went to the newsstand where mobster Frankie ‘Blinky’ Palermo hung out, and he tried to explain what had happened. ‘It was an accident,’ he told Blinky. ‘I just happened to catch him.’”1 If Tosches is right, the fight was fixed and the reputed mob leader let Sugar slide. But it would not be the last time Palermo tried to reel him in.

  Despite his being voted the fighter of the year by Ring magazine, there was no title shot on the horizon for Sugar. He was angry, and he took his beef to Mike Jacobs, boxing’s top promoter, whose office was on the sixth floor of the Brill Building in Tin Pan Alley, above Jack Dempsey’s restaurant on Broadway. In a couple of years the Alley, where many of the nation’s most popular songs were born, would be on the ropes, knocked out by Bill Haley and the Comets and the coming of rock and roll. Sugar was ready to send Jacobs to a similar oblivion, demanding a title bout with Red Cochrane, who had defeated Zivic for the welterweight crown a year earlier and was now in the Navy. Jacobs informed Sugar that Cochrane was not available, and that before long, neither would he be. “Any day now you’ll be getting your Army induction notice,” Jacobs promised. Sugar asked him how he knew. “I know,” Jacobs said slyly.2 Even so, Jacobs continued, there was still time left to squeeze in a couple of bouts. Sugar felt somewhat better when told that a return match against LaMotta in Detroit was his, if he wanted it. He wanted it. And so did thousands of Sugar’s fans—and his father—in Detroit.

  The Olympia Stadium, on the west side of the city at Grand River and McGraw, was jam-packed on February 5, 1943, the noise almost unbearable. When Sugar was introduced the decibel level went up another notch. LaMotta, because he had fought so often in the city, most recently in a technical knockout victory over Charley Hayes, who had never been on the canvas, also received a booming welcome. No fighter in any weight class could take as much punishment as the Bull and still remain on his feet, although Sugar came close, having never been knocked out at this stage of his career. That LaMotta had never been floored while absorbing more than thirty thousand punches during his career was a fact that he and his face would wear with lasting pride and honor.

  For seven rounds the contest was very even, with each fighter getting and giving his share of effective punches. But in the eighth round the Bull landed a blow to Sugar’s solar plexus that took all the air out of him and sent him sailing through the ropes. As Sugar struggled to regain his feet, referee Sam Hennessy reached the count of eight. Sugar barely made it back off the ring’s apron before he’d have been counted out. His out-of-shape body was now even more out of shape, and for the two remaining rounds it was all he could do to dance away from the Bull’s rushes. Since his last fight with LaMotta, Sugar had done too much celebrating, dancing, and carousing with his friends to have ever been accused of taking his return match with the Bull seriously. The lackadaisical training and the nightlife had defeated Sugar long before he got in the ring with LaMotta. Sugar ended the fight on his feet, but his self-esteem and pride were flat on the floor. There was no place to hide when he heard that LaMotta, a three-to-one underdog, was the victor. All of Sugar’s sweet triumphs could not assuage the embarrassment of this setback in his hometown. Facing his friends and his father afterward was the most difficult chore of his short life.

  Fortunately, he wouldn’t have to wait too long to get a chance to atone for his miserable showing. A tune-up fight against Jackie Wilson at Madison Square Garden back in New York on February 19 was pretty routine, and Sugar had no trouble taking a decision from him. Sugar was on a mission to reclaim his dignity, and he wasn’t about to let anything get in his way. Not even the likes of Frankie “Blinky” Palermo, the shady underworld character many believed was in cahoots with mobsters who fixed fights, could distract Sugar once he made up his mind.

  For the third time, Sugar and the Bull were going to enter the ring to settle their feud. Each had won a bout; the rubber match was set for Detroit’s Olympia on February 26, and hundreds of disappointed fans were unable to get into the sold-out arena. This would be Sugar’s third fight of the month, which is absolutely astounding when you consider today’s scheduling, in which a ranked contender rarely fights more than once a year. Sugar and LaMotta didn’t relish fighting each other, but they had little choice, since most of the top-ranked fighters avoided them, thus forcing them to oppose one another in order to get decent gate receipts. Despite his recent defeat against the Bull, the press favored Sugar. Throughout the days leading up to the fight, LaMotta complained about the lack of press he was getting and all the hype Sugar was receiving. Several stories had even quoted Sugar about his impending tour of duty in the military (Jacobs, as it turned out, was right: Sugar had been called to service). LaMotta was sick of hearing about the “brave boy off to fight for his country.”

  Unlike their previous match, Sugar trained hard for the fight, and won a ten-round decision, though LaMotta claimed he won. LaMotta’s complaints were vociferous: “I didn’t lose it, he got the decision…. You can ask anyone who was there…or you can read the newspaper stories,” he would recount in his autobiography.

  Sugar had only a few hours to enjoy the victory. The next day, February 27, as Jacobs had threatened, he was inducted into the Army.

  CHAPTER 9

  FROM SILK TO OLIVE DRAB

  At the Whitehall Street center near the lower tip of Manhattan, draftees and recruits were asked to strip down to their drawers. Walking up and down halls with nothing on but your shorts was nothing new for Sugar. But he was eventually asked to pull them all the way down for a full inspection. Even more disconcerting than the invasion of his privacy was the call to attention by his original name. “Walker Smith,” a drill sergeant barked, and Sugar fell into the ranks with the other raw troops, then boarded an olive-drab bus that was bound for the Holland Tunnel and on to Fort Dix, New Jersey.

  Fort Dix was a sprawling place where the numerous barracks blended with the greenish uniforms. From this location, a soldier was usually deployed to Europe, if overseas orders were cut. Between each row of plain buildings were exercise grounds that Sugar would become well acquainted with in due time. Making reveille was never a problem for a boxer used to getting up at the crack of dawn. Nor was he that unnerved by the early morning calisthenics. He thought of Greenwood Lake and trotting through clumps of pine trees, sometimes trailing Joe Louis, sometimes leading the way. Sugar discovered immediately that he was in far better physical shape than his fellow soldiers. They would be exhausted after a quarter mile of jogging, while he was breezing along way out front, still breathing comfortably through his mouth. Excelling at basic training, however, didn’t mask the ceaseless boredom of the camp. What was missing were his trainer Gainford, his cornermen Soldier Jones and Harry Wiley, and the sparring partners who kept the training camp abuzz with chatter and laughter.

  After basic training, Sugar’s orders were cut and he was assigned to the Army Air Corps at Mitchell Field in Hempstead, Long Island, about fifteen miles east of New York City, closer than Fort Dix, close enough for him to make quick trips to the city to see his beloved Edna Mae. When Edna Mae agreed to go to Chicago to dance at the Rhumboogie, a nightclub owned by Joe Louis, Sugar was plenty salty. Louis had bought the club, located on Garfield Boulevard, for forty thousand dollars and put Leonard Reed, a comedian and later his stage partner, in charge. Edna Mae, who had given up dancing at Sugar’s request, missed performing and didn’t think Sugar would mind since she was doing it as a favor to his friend. Plus, Sugar was off completing his basic training, and she was getting bored sitting around waiting
for him to get a leave. This was an opportunity to jump-start her career, she thought, and might lead to her landing a dancing role in a Hollywood film. She was banking on Louis’s contacts with film moguls and wealthy producers, since he had made a movie in Hollywood.

  Sugar was furious. Some of his fury may have been the result of discovering that Edna Mae might have been one of Louis’s many lovers, a roster of beauties that included the actress and dancer Acquanetta, vocalists Damita Jo and Lena Horne, and a bevy of blondes. A brief romance between Edna Mae and Louis was often rumored, but never confirmed. Neither Sugar nor Edna Mae ever mentioned it, nor did she address another persistent rumor of an earlier marriage to Willie Bryant, disc jockey and bandleader.

  Sugar’s objections notwithstanding, she packed her bags and left for the Windy City. The next day, practically on the train behind her, Sugar was in Chicago. Unable to secure a pass on such short notice, he left the barracks anyway and was absent without leave. He had called Edna Mae and told her he was on his way with intentions of marrying her and taking her back to New York. She thought he was bluffing, but Sugar was never one to bluff. They were married on May 29, 1943, at the home of one of Edna Mae’s friends. One account asserts that Sugar was AWOL; another says he had secured a three-day pass. Dates were never Sugar’s strong point, and he recorded the marriage year as 1944. Sugar was twenty-one and Edna Mae was twenty-seven. “There was gossip that Sugar’s family, especially his mother, didn’t want him to marry Edna Mae because she was so much older than he was,” said Harlem chronicler Delilah Jackson.