Sugar Ray Leonard was scheduled to make the second defense of his unified welterweight championship against Roger Stafford in Buffalo, New York on May 14th, 1982. I was worked for a Philadelphia airline at the time, and flew up to see Ray train at the Hilton hotel in Buffalo. Flying stand-by, I was required to wear a suit jacket and tie and it made my trip a little more uncomfortable.
The ballroom that Leonard’s camp was set in, was very warm to say the least. I enduring the profuse sweating to see Ray live and it was exciting. He was lithe and fit and in quick in his sparring session. I did notice that about after 5 rounds of sparring, he climbed through the ropes and left the room. He did that without saying a word and when everyone asked his trainers what was wrong, they didn’t have an answer.
I found out out the next day that Ray had suffered a detached retina in training and his eye was bothering him, and that’s why his training session was cut short. This led to his eye surgery and announced retirement from boxing, leaving a huge hole on the boxing landscape.
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