Sweet Thunder Page 40
Back on American soil, Robinson conferred with his money men. He began to worry about paying his debts. He went for walks to find places of worship; he’d again sit in churches, pondering his problems—and his future. The denominations of the places where he went to meditate made no difference. “Sometimes mine would be the only black face in the synagogue,” he recalled.
He sat in his New York home, not wanting to return to fighting, but seeing no other way to settle his bills, and no way to quiet the drumbeat of what he missed—the recognition, the lights, the acclaim. He would have to put his show business dreams back in the bottle, just as Joe Louis and Henry Armstrong and Rocky Graziano had done. Still he had lived a dream: traveling about the country with his musical heroes, playing to the crowds alongside Louis Armstrong, Cootie Williams, and Count Basie. But the experience had also revealed something else: how cocooned he had been inside the big world of boxing. Out on the road, he had seen firsthand the ongoing day-to-day indignities of the Negro performer. He had come close to being arrested in Georgia after an accident and some testy words with a local sheriff. Luckily he had been recognized and everyone had been let go. He never dreamed how hard musicians and gifted entertainers had to work to make stage life seem effortless. They worked just as hard as he had as a young kid rising into morning darkness and galloping through Central Park and dreaming of a life inside a boxing ring. After a while, playing in front of those small crowds—75, 100, 125 people—began to dismay him. As a fighter, he had played to crowds of 50,000 and more! Upon first entering the entertainment world, Robinson was promised $15,000 a week; now his price was down to less than a third of that figure.
What Sugar Ray Robinson had to face was that in the end, the public wanted him in his earlier incarnation. They didn’t much care for the figure in white tie and tails, no matter how handsome he looked. They preferred him when he danced in a boxing ring, stutter-stepping, unleashing frightening bolo combinations, and winning world championships. They wanted Sugar Ray Robinson writ large, the way they remembered him.
He spied himself in the mirror, wondering about his physique and physical condition. He told friends that the dancing had actually kept him in shape. Edna Mae and his two sisters did not want him to return to boxing; they thought he could turn his entertainment fortunes around. When the unlikelihood of that happening became undeniable, they resigned themselves to supporting his decision. Sugar Ray simply did not want to play to near-empty nightclubs.
He found it hard to realize something inside him actually missed the violent sport. It was that rising orchestral applause of a stadium crowd of tens of thousands who had just seen his lightning left hook inflict damage. He conferred with George Gainford first, then Harry Wiley. Gainford wondered how much the passing of time—Robinson had been away from the ring more than two years—would affect his fighter. But he looked at the middleweight landscape—Bobo Olson, Tiger Jones, Carmen Basilio—and, while it was a respectable bunch, he found no reason to fret. There would be something profoundly different this time: Robinson aimed to take even tighter control of his career. And there was one major casualty of his foray out into the stage lights. He would never fully trust Gainford again—the memory of Gainford belittling his show business dream rankled—and aimed to use him as little more than a traveling secretary.
There was a sizeable crowd at the press conference at Sugar Ray’s club, though it hardly compared with the crowds that had gathered when there was a big announcement to be made about an upcoming fight. After he announced his comeback, people were seen shadow-boxing into thin air on their way out. It was as if their most secret wish had been answered: Sugar Ray would soon be stirring again. Bar patrons toasted one another in Harlem that night.
Shortly thereafter, Wiley, Gainford, and Robinson—along with sparring partners and a cook—vanished into the woods of New York. His Cabin-in-the-Sky training camp at Greenwood Lake had, of course, been named in honor of Lena and her movie. The plan was to stage a few fights after training to gauge the shape Robinson was in and then challenge those fighters who had attempted to fill his absence from the ring.
Robinson ran like a deer through the surroundings of Greenwood Lake. Lovely tunes floated from his phonograph—“Sweet Georgia Brown,” “The Very Thought of You.” It was autumn. The air was crisp and the leaves golden. Lou Duva—who would come to promote bouts in the 1980s and 1990s featuring stars such as Pernell Whitaker, Thomas Hearns, and Evander Holyfield—had boxed in New Jersey as a youth, gaining some acclaim. During World War II he had taught boxing at Fort Hood in Texas. He found himself hustling up to Robinson’s camp—damn an invite—as Robinson began training for his comeback. “You’d watch him jump rope, and it was like watching Astaire dance,” Duva recalls. Sugar Ray remained pretty to watch, but Gainford was concerned about his fighter’s legs, about stamina, about the former champion’s right-left combination. Normally a voluble sort, Robinson was now prone to staring off into the distance, toward the trees. During Robinson’s retirement, Gainford had unsuccessfully tried to find the next Sugar Ray Robinson. And now the original left him with doubts, which he mostly kept to himself. Gainford realized that more than two and a half years had passed. In a boxing manager’s mind, that means possible speed loss, muscle degeneration, the slowing of natural instinct.
The great prizefighter wouldn’t allow the world to see him as a failure. Maybe they could have said that about Walker Smith Jr.—but not the Sugar Ray he had created. He now wanted to make things last; he now wished to endure. He would bleed again, and he would cause others to bleed. History was often on his mind: He had slipped through the curtain that often unfurled around the likes of Joe Louis and Henry Armstrong—where white bewitched black, and black bewitched white—and created the boxer as stylish symbol, inspiring waves of beauty, sepia and otherwise, all about him. He did not look for sympathy, or require it. He just kept running and running, rustling the leaves, as unworried as all great champions must be—and quite happy to be back in his Cabin in the Sky.
They called them comebacks. Won’t you come back home, Joe Louis? Won’t you please come back home, Henry Armstrong? Rocky Graziano, please come back. Home, of course, being the ring. They all believed in the call of the boxing populace, believed in it so much that it began to sound like a call to civic duty that must be answered. Money, certainly, played a part. But there was something deeper: What if you simply needed to walk back through that door where you knew you’d be admired, touched, and loved again beyond your wildest dreams? Mortals couldn’t understand it. Champions made peace with the devil in the afterglow of being given that first belt. They’d retire. And they’d make a comeback. Always hungering for that Great Second Act. Of course it only proved that the gods were always ahead of them, inside the ring.
1954–1956
greatness again
HAVING BEEN AROUND the fight game for much of his adult life, George Gainford realized how unpredictable a comeback could be. He continued to harbor mixed emotions about the entire undertaking, intimating that Robinson’s interests were not completely divorced from a return to another venue—that of entertaining. “Sugar and I want to make a tour of the world with our own show, and we figure it will take a quarter of a million dollars to arrange that—hiring singers, dancers and an orchestra. There is only one way to get the cash and that is for Sugar to fight again.”
The battle outdoors in the heat with Joey Maxim would be talked about for decades.
Gainford was being disingenuous. For Robinson—which meant for Gainford as well, since his income was tied to Robinson’s fate—the wolf was at the door.
As soon as he reentered the world of pugilism, Sugar Ray Robinson quickly noticed a change in the boxing landscape. Television executives had gained even more leverage over fight promoters. Boxing officials decided to increase their ranks to contend with the aggressive TV execs. The days of Robinson and Gainford battling alone for his interests in business suites were long gone. Robinson addressed the n
ew realities by increasing his management team. He added two new members: Ernie Braca, a savvy and shrewd fight manager, and Truman Gibson, a Chicago attorney who had handled some business affairs for Joe Louis. He also retained the services of Glaser, his entertainment agent. (It was Braca, sitting over a meal with Robinson at Gallagher’s Steak House on Fifty-second Street in Manhattan in 1955, who offered the backing needed to finance Robinson’s return to the ring.) Gainford, always protective of his position in the Robinson entourage, did not think the additions necessary but had to concede to Robinson’s wishes.
Sugar Ray’s intentions were to position himself for a title shot as quickly as possible. There were two reasons for his impatience: He had always lived as a champion. And he also felt that boxing officials had forced him to prematurely give up his middleweight crown as he was pondering a move into the entertainment field. The middleweight crown he had voluntarily given up was now held by Bobo Olson, a fighter he had, of course, already defeated twice. Robinson’s team began arranging tune-ups. He traveled to Hamilton, Ontario, where, on November 29 of 1954, he had a bout with the American journeyman Gene Burton. He tussled with Burton for six rounds. ROBINSON FLASHES SKILL, the New York Times headline announced. The victory was admirable—Burton had won decisions against both Johnny Bratton and Kid Gavilan, who were estimable punchers—but all the same some of Robinson’s more unforgiving fans wondered if the old Sugar Ray knockout punch still existed.
Five weeks later Robinson found himself back in familiar territory: A January 5 bout was the featured attraction at the Olympia in Detroit, and his announced opponent, Joe Rindone, a twenty-eight-year-old ex-Marine from Roxbury, Massachusetts. Boxing actually survived on sinewy and muscled fighters like Rindone. They were good, but mostly beneath the radar; they made few demands on their managers; and they possessed courage enough to climb into the ring with practically anyone. They could pocket upwards of $40,000 a year, a quite attractive income in 1950s America but one that took a drubbing when manager and cornermen fees were subtracted. Rindone’s forte was resilience: As Robinson himself said of Rindone, “he had been around.”
When Robinson and his team arrived in Detroit, it was like being back home again. Old friends wanted time with him, but he kept his socializing to a minimum, realizing a bad showing could derail his comeback attempt. Onlookers marveled anew at the stylishness of Robinson’s entourage. (Outsiders sometimes wondered if the entourage was proof that Robinson had become entranced by stardom. But for the champion Negro boxer, an entourage often served as security protection as they traveled about the country.) Ziggy Johnson, who wrote a column for the Chicago Defender from Detroit, thought that Gainford arrived in the city “looking like a gentleman model out of Esquire.” Sugar Ray was seen hanging out with jazzman Dizzy Gillespie at the local Gotham Hotel, laughing as his lovely wife Edna Mae beamed nearby.
Even before the bout, some members of Robinson’s camp were already shouting that he deserved a shot at titleholder Olson.
Sugar Ray was too seasoned, too long immersed in the chaos of the fight game, to have butterflies, but he was excited as he entered the stadium with nearly twelve thousand fans watching, among them the rising young songstress Sarah Vaughan. “Sugar Ray even has the ladies discussing his comeback,” Ziggy Johnson noted. The slashing rain had kept few away. (Noticeably absent, however, were the TV cameras, as the bout was not deemed important enough to televise.) Robinson was accompanied by a half dozen men as he made his way toward the ring. Rindone had an entourage of just two.
Sugar Ray opened the fight with lefts to Rindone’s upper body; the quickness of them seemed to stun the former Marine. In the succeeding rounds Robinson alternated between Rindone’s upper and lower body, wearing him down. If Rindone seemed steady, he also seemed too cautious, refusing to take advantage of openings Robinson gave him. “When does the fight start?” a fan yelled out during the third round, summing up the audience response to the tepid proceedings. It began—and ended—in the sixth. Just seconds into that round Rindone unwisely dropped his left. Sugar Ray Robinson may not have been the Sugar Ray of the past, but he was about to show everyone he was still Sugar Ray: He unloaded an “explosive right uppercut” that floored Rindone. And then, as The New York Times would note, “it was only a matter of seconds before the nimble Negro moved in for the knockout.” The fans were on their feet as the referee began the count. Robinson was snorting and Rindone was dazed. Joe Glaser was angling toward the ring. It was all over. Glaser got Robinson’s ear first, the lightbulbs throwing off glints of powerful light, Edna Mae Robinson beaming in the stands. “I’m the boss now. I’m going to guide you to the title,” the thick-voiced Glaser said to Robinson over the din of noise. Sugar Ray turned to the crowd with his arms raised.
The mood shifted in the locker room, however. Ernie Braca, one of those new members of Robinson’s entourage, pronounced himself dissatisfied. He told Sugar Ray he should have floored Rindone far sooner; he told him his timing was far from where it needed to be to face the likes of Bobo Olson. Robinson’s showing struck others as lackluster as well. “His misses were wild and many,” the Chicago Defender concluded of Robinson. “He backed away a great deal and appeared confused each time he was tagged by Rindone.” The dissonance unnerved Robinson. Gainford seemed caught between the sensations of the old glory of his fighter, and the reality of Braca’s comments.
Little wonder that the Detroit night—and victory—passed quickly. But Truman Gibson, the former adviser to Joe Louis who was another of those new members of Robinson’s camp, wished to take advantage of the positive publicity generated by the comeback.
Sugar Ray’s negotiators scheduled a televised fight for January 19—just two weeks after Rindone—against Ralph “Tiger” Jones in Chicago.
Jones, a native of Yonkers, New York, was not unlike Rindone in that he was another muscled journeyman. But he was considered more dangerous. That reality caused friction within Robinson’s camp. Glaser was wary not only of the swiftness with which Gibson had set up the bout, but the opponent as well. “Jones is a little too tough for Robinson at this point,” Glaser told a Chicago reporter. It was the kind of utterance—with its tone of fear and even cowardice—that would never have been allowed in Robinson’s boxing past. “We’re not looking for soft touches,” Glaser added, “but by the same token I’d like to have Ray meet some other middleweight at this time.” Gibson felt Robinson couldn’t ignore the potent middleweights now fighting, that they were the very fighters who stood in Robinson’s path as he eyed Olson. “If Robinson wants to box in Chicago, it’ll have to be Ralph ‘Tiger’ Jones or nobody,” Gibson said. He saw everything wrapped in momentum, and a need for a former champion to remind as many fight fans as possible of his skills as quickly as he could. “The fact remains that Robinson will be seen by millions and if he expects to continue fighting and wants the public to turn out at the box office,” Gibson argued, “he’ll have to meet top opponents.”
Gainford was uncharacteristically silent. That wolf at the door now stared across at a Tiger in the ring.
Tiger Jones had a pro record of thirty-five wins and twelve defeats. The fact that he had lost five fights in a row before meeting Sugar Ray did not diminish the respect many had for him. It merely pointed to the crowded and competitive field of middleweight contenders. After all, Jones was ranked third among middleweights.
And in the second round of their bout inside Chicago Stadium, with a national TV audience looking on, Sugar Ray saw why Joe Glaser was wary of Jones: The hard-hitting puncher slammed a blow into Robinson’s forehead that drew blood from just above the right eye. Robinson countered with a left hook, but the stealth of Jones shocked him: “When I hit Joe Rindone with that punch,” Robinson would recall, “he had gone down. So had maybe fifty other guys through the years.” The muscled Jones not only stayed upright, he began bullying Sugar Ray, backing him around the ring. In the third, Jones landed another vicious blow, causing Robinson’s nose to bleed. Confusi
on in Robinson’s corner was evident: His cornermen were unable to stanch the flow of blood. Fans gasped. Mel Dick, Robinson’s young Brooklyn friend, was in Chicago that night but couldn’t bring himself to go see Robinson, so he watched the fight at a local bar. He was among those who thought Sugar Ray should have stayed retired. Sitting on his barstool, looking up at the television, he winced every time Robinson took a hard blow.
Robinson managed to stay even with Jones in the fourth, but thereafter onlookers noticed how much quicker Jones appeared than Robinson. At the end of the sixth, Gainford leaned over to Robinson in the corner and told him the only way he could salvage the fight was to knock Jones out. It was wishful thinking. From the seventh on, as the UP reporter noted, “Jones landed consistently with both hands to pile up a good margin on points, meanwhile blocking Robinson’s wide hooks with both left and right hands.” At the end of the ninth, a visibly worried Gainford tended to Sugar Ray’s bruised right eye. Parts of the stadium seemed to be in a kind of hushed trance. In the tenth, Robinson staggered about the ring. When the expected victory was announced for Jones—who had come into the fight a 7–2 underdog—onlookers rushed the ring while police officers clamored to keep them out. In his corner, Sugar Ray was slumped over, and he looked like an exhausted man. Cameras flashed as he was led through the throng to his dressing room. Looking around, Tiger Jones suddenly realized that, even in victory, he could not garner as much attention as Robinson in defeat. “Hey, Sugar!” came the cries around the stadium as the former champion disappeared from view. (They were reminiscent of the same cries shouted when Robinson had defeated LaMotta in that same stadium for the middleweight crown.)