After the difficult loss to Roberto Duran on June 20, 1980, Sugar Ray Leonard took a vacation trip to Hawaii with his wife Juanita. While contemplating retirement, Ray woke up one day and went for a run on beach, realizing that he was just too young to retire. When he returned to the States, Ray told his manager Mike Trainer to set up a rematch with Duran, with no bouts in between.
Mike Trainer did as Ray instructed and November 25, 1980 was agreed up for the rematch, this time at the Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana. That November, I was working in a local department store as a TV salesman while I was looking for an airline job. To see the fight this time, I bought a ticket to watch the closed-circuit broadcast at Atlantic City Convention Hall on the boardwalk, which was most famous at the time for hosting the Miss America Pageant every September.
Thanks to Don King, the ticket prices jumped to $35 a piece, which was a hefty amount to pay for a guy like me. Nonetheless, I borrowed my dad’s brand new 1980 Mercury Marquis, and made the hour or so trek down the shore to catch the action. Entering the cavernous area was strange for me, since I had not been there for years. As I walked the slowly filling Convention Hall, it seemed odd that I was there to see a fight, something I never could have imagined three years earlier.
Boxing was now my passion, and Sugar Ray Leonard was my favorite fighter. I even started drinking 7 Up after seeing his commercial for the soda with his son ‘Little Ray’. Leonard couldn’t afford a loss to Duran, otherwise his career would be a standstill and leave him out of the championship picture. Sugar Ray had trained hard and bulked up, with plans to box Duran this time, and set the record straight after his June defeat.
Ray boxed from the opening bell, and avoided letting Duran bully him on the ropes. Leonard would spin away, box and control the ring action. After about four rounds, I scored one for Duran, and it was clear to me that Ray was in total control. Sugar would often nail Roberto with stinging punches, not just jabs and you could see the Panamanian’s frustration building. In the 7th round, Ray began taunting Duran with feints, faked a bolo punch and instead nailed Roberto with a sharp left jab. Duran seethed, but as the round closed it didn’t matter to me.
What happened in the 8th round was inexplicable, and not a person on planet Earth could have predicted it. In the closed moments of the round, Duran turned his back on Ray and walked away, motioning to referee Octavio Meyran that he had quit. After being questioned by the ref, Duran made it clear that he meant what he had said, and he had indeed quit. Shock was the only way to describe how I felt, as did the millions watching the fight around the world. To see Duran quit was almost better than seeing the bully knocked out to me, and the hour ride home was celebratory.
After the loss, Duran made up some crap that he had stomach cramps which forced him to quit. His owner trainer Ray Arcel said “Duran never said a word to me.” in his post-fight interview with Howard Cosell. I never believed this nonsense for a minute, but many in the public bought his excuse. The bottom line was that Sugar Ray had beaten him and was the new WBC Welterweight Champion of the World. Nothing else mattered to me and the excuses tried to take away from Ray’s great performance, so I simply ignored them.
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