Ray Charles LEONARD
"Sugar"
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Lugar de Nacimiento: Wilmington (North Carolina), Estados Unidos.
Fecha de Nacimiento: 17 mayo 1956.

Récord Amateur: 145 fights; 140+ (75 KO), 5-
Light Welterweight Olympic Champion (Montreal 1976)
Récord Profesional: 40 fights; 36+ (25 KO), 1=, 3-
1979-1980: World Welterweight Champion
1980-1982: World Welterweight Champion
1981: World Junior Middleweight Champion
1987: World Middleweight Champion
1988-1989: WBC Light Heavyweight Champion
1988-1990: WBC Super Middleweight Champion

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Ray Leonard is one of the best American amateur boxers of all time. He won the 1972 Junior National AAU Championships, 1973 and 1974 National Golden Gloves, 1974 and 1975 National AAU Championships, 1975 Pan-American Games, and the 1976 Olympic Games.

Pat Nappi, the famous US Olympic boxing coach, said in 1976 that Ray was the best amateur he’s ever seen, including Muhammad Ali. “He throws better combinations than Ali, he has a professional left hook, a sharp jab, and throws the right from a dozen different angles. Then, of course, he also has the great legs. And remember, he’s just twenty, but already a tremendously poised fighter as an amateur. If he ever chooses to turn pro, there is no telling how far he might go.” And the coach was right – Sugar Ray went on to become one of the greatest fighters in the history of boxing, pound for pound.

To the Olympics 1

Ray started boxing in 1970, when an ex-boxer, Dave Jacobs, volunteered to coach the kids at the Palmer Park Recreation Center, in Ray’s poor neighborhood just outside Washington, D.C. In the spring of 1971 he beat Bobby Magruder, who was, according the most, the best amateur boxer in the area. Ray steamrolled his opponents in regional tournaments and won the regional AAU tournament (novice division) in 1971 and even went to Cincinnati for the 1972 Eastern Olympic Trials, but lost to a local fighter in a close and unpopular decision.

“So at the trials I fought this dude named Greg Whaley in the quarterfinals,” he remembered. “I gave him a slightly fractured jaw, but he got the decision. I really didn’t think anything about it until I got home and people started saying, ‘Wow, man, you could have gone to the Olympics.’”

Then he went to Texas, to the final "box-offs" as a member of the Army team, but the day before his last-chance fight to make the 1972 Olympic boxing team, Ray collapsed while he was running around a track at Texas Christian University and the Army's team doctor disqualify him from the next day competition.

To the Olympics 2

In the fall of 1972 Leonard won the Junior National AAU Championships and in January 1973 he had his first taste of international competition when the Soviet boxing team came to Las Vegas, Nevada. He first opponent was a Russian at least six years older and far more experienced. Ray flattened him with a single left hook seconds into the fight. In his next fight, he got knocked down, but up before the count was over, and got his revenge by knocking out his opponent in the third round.

Leonard earned a fearful reputation with knockout power in both hands, and won over the fans with his famous smile. “The guy can’t understand how I can hit him and smile at the same time,” he said. “It psyches them. And the crowd seems to like it, too.”

In his next 100 amateur fights, Leonard lost only three times in his next 100 amateur fights. At least one of these fights was a clear-cut loss. In the 1973 National AAU finals, he lost to Randy Shields, and there didn't seem to be any politics behid the judges' decision.

Leonard's other losses were against foreign opponents in their own countries, and both losses were highly controversial. Against Soviet champion Anatoli Kamnev (Moscow, May 1974), Leonard fought so well that when the judges awarded the win to Kamnev, the largely Russian audience booed. Kamnev himself walked across the ring and gave Leonard the trophy he had just won.

Was the first time Leonard went overseas and he felt very homesick. After that close, "political" loss against Kamnev he was terribly depressed. He won the 1974 National AAU and North-American championships, but he declined go to World Amateur Championships in Havana, Cuba, because he hated being away from home. Leonard was very close to hanging up his gloves, but his brother Roger and his father Cicero urged him not to quit.

In the fall of 1974, Ray accompained the USA national amateur team to Poland, where he lost against the local fighter Jan Kwacz, who was knocked down three times in the first round. But the referee ruled that Leonard had punched Kwacz for the third and final time after the round-ending bell had sounded, and disqualified him. It was his fifth and last loss of his amateur career.

In the summer of 1975, Leonard won the Panamerican Games, in Mexico City.

Ever since his loss at the 1972 trials, Sugar Ray has dreamed of the Olympics. After defeating all of his opponents at the 1976 Olympic box-offs, Leonard went on to score six unanimous decisions in Montreal and win the gold medal. Despite seriously hurting his already fragile fists in the semifinal bout, in the Olympic finals he staggered his strong Cuban opponent, Andres Aldama, on several occasions, all but knocking him out with swift combinations. American team manager Rolly Schwartz said that no one realizes “the sacrifices this man has been through to get this far. He can’t even close his fists after a fight until we put ice on them. They are in terrible shape, terrible shape, but he has got the biggest heart I’ve ever seen. That’s the only way he fought tonight.”

Despite initially planning to quit boxing after the Olympics and start working towards a degree in business administration at the University of Maryland that offered him a two-year scholarship, Leonard accepted an offer to fight professionally and appointed Angelo Dundee as his manager. Three years later, Sugar Ray Leonard became the welterweight champion of the world.

Palmarés Amateur de Sugar Ray Leonard:

1971

1972

1973

1974

1975

1976

Credits: Vladimir Branicki and the book "Sugar Ray Leonard" by James Haskins.

REGRESO A PÁGINA DE INICIO

Nota: Éste palmarés está incompleto y puede ser inexacto.

Responsable: [email protected]
(Ultima actualización: Oct-31-2007)