Pound for Pound Page 9
Since he was already in the South, Sugar took on a couple of exhibition bouts with Gene Burton, his reliable sparring partner, in Shreveport, Louisiana, and in Dallas, defeating him in both places—as he would five years later in Hamilton, Ontario—before proceeding home to see his newborn son.
He was only back in New York City a week when he learned that the great dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, the oldest of the three famous black Robinsons of New York City, had died. He always admired the dancer’s nimble footwork, and Bojangles would loom even larger in his memory a few years later when he retired from the ring to pursue a stage career.
Seated on a pew toward the middle of the church during the funeral, his mind slipped back to Hell’s Kitchen, where he’d first begun to imitate the dancer’s intricate steps. “Heel and toe, heel and toe,” he would repeat to himself as he performed outside the theaters not too far from where he lived. When the daydreaming ended, Sugar discovered he was surrounded by a cluster of celebrities who had jostled their way into the funeral at Abyssinian Baptist Church. Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Duke Ellington, Brooklyn Dodger pitcher Don Newcombe, and W. C. Handy were among the more prominent African Americans who turned out to pay their last respects to a dancer who could run as fast backward as some could forward. The crowd at the funeral was nowhere near as large as the numbers who’d filed into the 369th Regiment Armory to view the dancer’s body a few days earlier, but it certainly rivaled the massive assembly of folks at the funerals of two other prominent African Americans, actress Florence Mills’s in 1929 and entrepreneur A’Lelia Walker’s in 1931. For two days more than three thousand people visited the armory, many of them only vaguely aware of Robinson’s prowess as a tap dancer, even if they knew him as the “Mayor of Harlem.”7
From the funeral, Sugar headed directly home to help Edna Mae with the baby. This was his second chance at fatherhood, and he was doing his best, in his own way, to play the role. Still, there were some things he couldn’t face. He was squeamish about changing his son’s diaper and insisted Edna Mae have somebody available to perform this task when she wasn’t around. After only a few weeks of domesticity, Sugar was eager to get back in the ring. It was far more appealing to be across the ring from an opponent, ready to go mano a mano, than it was to change a baby’s diaper. On January 30, 1950, he knocked out George LaRover in the fourth round in New Haven, Connecticut. It was on the basis of such overwhelming victories that Nat Fleischer, then president and editor of Ring, deemed him the best all-around fighter of the year. Sugar, he wrote, possessed “fighting ability, hard hitting, clever boxing, ring generalship, masterful feinting and blocking and hitting…”8
As much as he despised the South, he accepted a bout in Miami. He was partly motivated by the chilly February weather in Harlem, and by an invitation to dine from noted columnist and radio commentator Walter Winchell, whose broadcasts with a clicking telegraph key in the background and the urgency of his “Mr. and Mrs. North and South American and all ships at sea…let’s go to press” endeared him to millions of Americans.
When Sugar arrived a few days before the scheduled event, Winchell was determined to take him everywhere he went, including to clubs and racetracks where blacks were forbidden. One sign read: No Negroes, Jews, or dogs. Sugar nudged Winchell, pointing to the sign. “Walter we’re not supposed to—”
“Forget it, Sugar Ray,” he barked. “You’re with me, you know.”
“Yeah, but you’re Jewish,” Sugar said.
“I’m Winchell,” the columnist snapped.9 On another occasion, Rachel Robinson, Jackie’s wife, was with Sugar and Edna Mae in Winchell’s company when he marched the couple into a Miami Beach nightclub. “He [Winchell] literally led the way, parted the waters, as Jack and I, Sugar Ray and his wife, followed like sheep to his table,” she said. “It was more tense than fun, but it was another barrier broken.”10
Inadvertently, Sugar and Edna Mae, along with the other Robinsons, were challenging discrimination in Miami and thereabouts, though it is debatable what impact they had in Miami. In Harlem, meanwhile, residents and activists were screaming about the increase of discrimination in industry. There were concerted cries for more militancy. Speaking at the Theresa Hotel in September 1950, Milton Webster, vice president of the Sleeping Car Porters, a union founded by A. Philip Randolph in 1925, asserted, “Negroes are relegated to black men’s jobs, where the work is hard, the hours are long, and the pay is poor.” Webster scoffed at the notion that Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson, or Sugar Ray Robinson were “examples of Negro progress.” To him they were but “isolated incidents.” “They brought us here in chains,” he blasted, “and we’re still in chains, and we must break them ourselves.”11
Fully involved in Harlem, to the extent that he even invested in it, he plunked down a few dollars at the pari-mutuel window at Miami’s Hialeah racetrack. When he wasn’t watching the galloping ponies circling the track, his eyes were fixed on the pink flamingos that waded in the track’s infield pond. Pink also caught his attention later at a party, when he saw Willie Pep’s manager wearing a pink tie. He begged the man to let him borrow it, because he was on his way to a car dealer in the Bronx and that was the color he wanted for his new Cadillac. There would be no more dark blue Buicks, which had hitherto been his trademark. After purchasing the car he drove it to a paint shop on 56th Street and 11th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen, not too far from where he lived as a kid. The paint job cost him three hundred dollars, but it was one-of-a-kind and exclusively his, Sugar boasted. There was only one Sugar Ray Robinson in the world, and now there was only one pink Cadillac, and always with a pair of gloves dangling from the rearview mirror.
Folks came from miles away to gaze upon the shiny new car, which in the sunlight radiated a special glow. For a moment it rivaled its owner in popularity, so much so that Life magazine sent a photographer to get pictures of it parked out front of the café. It stood as an emblem of possibility for a multitude of young black boys, who begged for an opportunity to polish it or to keep an eye on it for Sugar. When Sugar cruised through Harlem behind the wheel with the top down and his hair glistening, the sight was absolutely mesmerizing. “It was a spectacle you didn’t want to miss, and once you saw it you never forgot,” said boxing aficionado Clint Edwards. “No doubt about it, that was Sugar Ray.”
Sugar drove his fancy car downtown on September 27, 1950, to attend the fight between his friend Joe Louis, fresh out of retirement, and Ezzard Charles. Louis wanted him there for moral support, but he could have used him in the ring as well. Charles punished him over the first half of the fight and then carried him to the end, winning an easy fifteen-round decision. The once potent Brown Bomber was but a shell of his former self, so badly beaten that Sugar had to lean down and help him put his shoes on. Louis promised then and there that he would call it quits. But he didn’t, and bounced back in November with a victory over Cesar Brion.
Louis’s star was fading as the Sugar was reaching the pinnacle of his glorious flight. As he ascended, many black Americans vicariously soared with him, celebrating his appearance on the cover of the June 25, 1951, issue of Time magazine. Pedestrians passing his cluster of businesses saw the cover taped to the window of each store. A poster-size version, probably mocked up by Langley Waller, the pioneering Harlem lithographer, leaned atop the jukebox inside the café. There hadn’t been a black on the cover of the magazine since Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong made his appearance in February 1949, and there wouldn’t be one after Sugar until Willie Mays arrived there in 1954. He was the second black boxer to receive this honor—Joe Louis was the cover boy in 1941. On his cover, Sugar is beaming proudly as two boxing gloves with legs climb up a globe, one glove bearing a 147-pound marker and the other a 160, indicating his conquest of the world welterweight and middleweight championships. Sugar was riding a gigantic wave of success; the world was truly his oyster. He was at the top of his game and, according to several accounts, worth more than a hal
f-million dollars.
CHAPTER 12
A BROWN BABY AND A PINK CADILLAC
Sugar doesn’t report whether or not he was at the Garden the night Joe Louis successfully defended his title on June 25, 1948, against the ageless Jersey Joe Walcott, but it’s a good bet that he was. And whether he was there or not, he must have been immensely pleased to see that his old friend, at thirty-four, still had some warrior left in him before intimating that this might be his last fight.
Three days after Louis beat Walcott, Sugar eked out a fifteen-round decision over Bernard Docusen in Chicago to retain his title. Docusen had presented more of a contest than Sugar anticipated, and he knew he had to be in better condition and have sharper punches against Kid Gavilan, whom he was set to tangle with on September 23, 1948. Back at Greenwood Lake, he began to prepare for a tougher engagement with the crowd-pleasing Cuban.
Gavilan, born Gerardo Gonzalez in Camagüey, Cuba, was, at twenty-two, five years younger than Sugar and an extremely flashy, versatile fighter. According to several experts on Cuban fighters, Gavilan, who was called “The Hawk,” after the Spanish equivalent of his chosen name, was considered the latest edition of Kid Chocolate. Chocolate was Cuba’s first world champion boxer, winning the junior lightweight title in 1931. He beat the best fighters of his era, including Tony Canzoneri. Like Henry Armstrong, Kid Chocolate was one of Sugar’s favorite fighters, and many of his moves in the ring were patterned after Chocolate’s repertoire. Sugar was also rumored to have adopted Chocolate’s penchant for brightly colored, luxury sedans.
Until 1946, most of Gavilan’s fights took place in Havana, but once he hit the mainland his reputation soared, and by 1948 he was taking on top contenders in the welterweight division. He fought Gene Burton, Sugar’s stablemate, to a draw in January 1948, and it is very likely that Burton prepped Sugar on how to combat Gavilan’s artful style, which bordered on the poetic. It would be poetry in motion versus the complexity of the sweet science reduced to fundamental coordinates of speed and power when he stepped into the ring with Sugar.
In their September thriller, Sugar was rocked several times by the gallant Gavilan, but when it counted, in the last few rounds, Sugar cut him down like the cane of his island nation; each time Gavilan tried to launch his menacing bolo punch, Sugar bobbed away and quickly countered it with rapid jabs and left hooks. The power of Sugar’s punches snapped like a jackhammer, and each dazzling punch reconfigured Gavilan’s face. They landed with such force that the Hawk’s processed hair stood straight up as if electrified. The Hawk would have to wait until the following summer for revenge.
Energized by his victory over such an awesome challenger, Sugar stepped up his boxing routine, knocking Gene Buffalo unconscious in the first round in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on February 10, 1949, and fighting Henry Brimm to a draw in Buffalo five days later. It was around this time that Sugar and Joe Louis, who would officially retire from the ring on March 1, were seeking to go into business together. Their first project was to secure a liquor distributing license. While they had been involved separately as entrepreneurs, they felt their combined celebrity and their connections would be enough to get them the license, which was by no means easy to come by. To this end, a meeting was arranged between Sugar and Louis and their company, World Champions, Inc., with the New York State Liquor Authority (SLA). They wanted the Authority to grant them a wholesale beer license in New York City. Raising the specter of racism, the treasurer of World Champions further complained that no license had been granted to any “Negro distributorship in New York City for any alcoholic trade, beer, wine or whisky. They’ve got a pattern in New York that doesn’t look too good,” he added. On the other hand, he continued, the Illinois Liquor Control Commission had fewer qualms with the application.1 They were denied, the SLA basing its denial of application on the grounds that the Canadian Ace Brewing Company was one of the principal stockholders in World Champions, Inc., and that the brewing company was controlled by Harry Greenberg, a former associate of Al Capone.
They never got the license. However, there were companies such as Joe Louis Straight Bourbon Whiskey and Joe Louis Milk that capitalized on the Brown Bomber’s name. Louis also owned a small interest in Joe Louis Punch, a soft drink that never quite found an audience.
Neither Sugar nor the Brown Bomber sulked very long over the setback; they each simply looked for other ways to make some money. And when they were together it was a matter of who came up with the scheme first. Both were avid golfers, so it could have been a mutual agreement to sponsor a golf tournament. Their maiden voyage in the summer of 1948 went very well, Edna Mae remembered, during a period when she and Sugar were trying to patch up things. “It all went well except for one thing,” she recounted. “I was duped into thinking a young lady there was interested in Joe, but I learned later that she was my husband’s guest.” The tournaments would continue for a few years, with Sugar’s friend Teddy Rhodes the resident pro.
Sugar had a string of six fights through the spring and early summer of ’49, not one of them of any real significance. They were, to a large degree, paid sparring sessions in preparation for a return match with Kid Gavilan in July. This title scrap was slated for Municipal Stadium in Philadelphia, where both fighters were extremely popular. Sugar knew that the Kid was brimming with revenge, so he put in quality time at Greenwood Lake, and he even curbed his extracurricular activities.
Bettors at ringside in the jam-packed stadium—nearly twenty-eight thousand strong—were demanding more odds as they plunked their money down for Gavilan, many of them believing Sugar would be weakened after struggling to make the weight, the gaining of which was never easy for Sugar. During the middle rounds, the two fighters stood toe-to-toe, and in the eighth Sugar was staggered by a Gavilan combination. But he recovered before the round was over and completely dominated the second half of the fight. “It was anticipated that Sugar Ray would struggle, and trainer George Gainford had kidded about covering him with ‘reducing salve.’ Robinson was still a welterweight, and for that, every contender had to toast him—preferably with a high-calorie milkshake.”2
What they didn’t know was that Sugar had received an injection of glucose from Dr. Vincent Nardiello, the onetime state boxing commission’s doctor. This provided him with extra pep after the struggle to make the weight, though the glucose was known to dehydrate and reduce salt content. When the sweat dripped into your mouth, as Soldier Jones had taught him, and tasted stale and not salty, it meant your sugar content had also dropped.
Gavilan was crestfallen and angry. “I didn’t see too many rounds for Robinson,” he said in his broken English, as reported by James Dawson for the New York Times. “The judge who gave him twelve rounds, he crazy. He hit me hard several times, but I was surprised at the decision and would like to make one more fight with heem.”3
Sugar was training for his rematch with Gavilan, and trying to reconcile with Edna Mae. Whether intended or not, as a result of their reunions, Edna Mae was impregnated. In one way Sugar was excited to hear that he was going to be a father again, but he also worried that a child might affect his on-again-off-again relationship with Edna Mae negatively.
By now his oldest son, Ronnie, whom he saw only on special occasions, was almost ten years old. Sugar had no more of a father-son relationship with him than he had with his own father, Walker, Sr. Sugar promptly moved back in with his wife. There is no way to know how his mother felt about the new development, but intuitively Leila must have known that Sugar would probably never live with her again.
Having defeated Gavilan in a return match in July, Sugar prepared for a fight with Steve Belloise in August. The fight was really a makeup date for their cancellation of a fight the previous December. According to a story in the Boston Post, Sugar had postponed the fight because of an injury while sparring. The injury may have been the result of a punch from his sparring partner, the paper continued, but that punch was delivered on the street, not in the gym. When Tig
er Wade, a hard-hitting light heavyweight whom Sugar was using to acclimate him to his fight with Belloise, demanded all of his money after being told he would have to take a cut in pay, Sugar resisted. Wade insisted on all of his money or else. Sugar was defiant. “Robinson started to tell his broken-down sparring partner that he would be lucky to get anything—but he didn’t finish,” wrote Gerry Hern. “Wade fired his Sunday punch that knocked Robinson to the sidewalk and then gave him a brisk going over.” An hour later the fight was postponed. In years to come, there would be other rumors of Sugar’s stiffing his sparring partners, refusing to pay them what he’d promised.
When Sugar and Belloise finally squared off in August, “it wasn’t too much of a fight,” recalled political activist and jazz impresario Hilly Saunders, who was a spectator at this and many of Sugar’s fights. “I think he knocked the guy out in the sixth or the seventh round.”4 He did it in the seventh. “Honest to God, I don’t know what happened,” a beaten Belloise told Bill Mardo of the Daily Worker. “I remember being in a flurry but I don’t remember the punch that ended it. I don’t remember the punch, the bell, nothing, except somebody picking me up and the next thing I know I’m sitting back in my corner and somebody is saying don’t get up, Steve, it’s all over.”5
With fights scheduled for Chicago, Omaha, Houston, and Denver, Sugar was taking the long route to New Orleans to take on Vern Lester. He was in New Orleans on his way to the arena when Edna Mae called to tell him he had a son. Sugar was so excited that he knocked out Lester in the fifth round. “My son,” Sugar said proudly. “My second son really, but somehow this was different. When my other boy was born, more than a decade earlier, I hadn’t really known what it was all about. I was just a kid then myself. I wasn’t able to appreciate the miracle of a birth. To be honest, that first child had created more problems than happiness for me, and for Marjie [his first wife]. But this time it was different. We had a name all picked out if it was a boy: Ray, Junior.”6