LAS VEGAS was the place to be from November 4 to 7, 1988. On Friday the 4th, Bob Arum presented a big show outdoors at the Las Vegas Hilton, topped by Thomas Hearns meeting James ‘The Heat’ Kinchen. Then, on Monday the 7th, Sugar Ray Leonard attempted to become the first fighter to win titles in five weight classes when he met Donny Lalonde outdoors at Caesars Palace.
Fight Details: Sugar Ray Leonard WKO9 Donny Lalonde, Ceasars Palace, November 7, 1988.
As excellent as the Hilton show was, the fight fraternity’s focus was mainly on Leonard vs Lalonde. Leonard was going up in weight to challenge for Lalonde’s WBC light-heavyweight title, while the inaugural WBC super-middle championship was also at stake. Sugar Ray had been a champion at welterweight, super-welter and middleweight.
Now, in just one night, Sugar Ray had the chance to become a five-weight champ. And he did so with a ninth-round knockout, though not without a couple of scares along the way.
You could argue that Leonard’s five-title achievement was diluted by the fact that not only were two weight-division titles on the line in one fight, but also because Lalonde had to get down from 175 to 168 pounds in order to contest the super-middle championship.
Still, regardless of the circumstances, there was a historic element to the fight. And Lalonde, while the underdog, was not a pushover. The 28-year-old Canadian with the shoulder-length dyed-blond hair was, if nothing else, a very good puncher with the right hand (Lalonde’s left arm was compromised by a shoulder injury suffered playing ice hockey). And he had the size advantage.
Lalonde came into the fight in the form of his life, with back-to-back knockout wins in light-heavyweight title fights. He had won 12 fights in a row, although mostly against nondescript opposition. The light-heavy champ maintained that making 168lbs wouldn’t weaken him, having scaled comfortably inside 175lbs for his last two fights.
Leonard had speed and skill on his side, everyone knew that, and he had the big-fight experience. Talent-wise, Lalonde wasn’t on Leonard’s level.
But the Canadian ‘Golden Boy’ (a statue of that name in Lalonde’s Winnipeg hometown inspired the moniker) clearly presented at least a degree of danger. I went out on a limb and predicted an upset in the Boxing News preview. Leonard was a 2/7 favourite at the Vegas sportsbooks.
The last press conference in Las Vegas, the Saturday before the fight, was good fun. Lalonde seemed almost too confident. He called Leonard “an old, fat welterweight”.
Sugar Ray, not that old at 32 and far from fat, was making his third or fourth comeback, depending on how you looked at it. He retired after surgery to repair a detached retina in 1982, retired again after a disappointing performance against Kevin Howard in a welterweight fight in 1984 and then said he was quitting the ring after defeating Marvin Hagler for the middleweight title in 1987.
Yet here was Sugar Ray, back again. He joked that he’d lost count of the number of times he’d retired and come back. Leonard’s lawyer, Mike Trainer, was promoter of record under the banner of Victory Promotions.
Not everyone was thrilled at the prospect of Sugar Ray making still another comeback. “Leonard can’t bring himself to get off the stage,” columnist Jack Fiske wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle. “His ego is insufferable.”
But others looked forward to seeing Leonard back in the ring. “Any chance to view his marvellous skills should be duly appreciated by fight fans,” Michael Marley opined in the New York Post.
I was in agreement with Marley’s sentiments.
The show drew 750 requests for media credentials from 15 countries. The worldwide interest was there.
Leonard entered the ring with a record of 34-1, 24 KOs. Lalonde’s record stood at 31-2, 26 KOs, but he’d never been in a fight anywhere near this magnitude.
Twelve of 15 writers polled by USA Today picked Leonard. A crowd of 13,246 attended Caesars’ 15,200-capacity tennis court stadium.
I was still buzzing from the Friday show when Hearns had to pick himself off the canvas to defeat Kinchen, and Robert Hines survived two knockdowns to upset the odds against Matthew Hilton.
This was my first look at Leonard in the flesh and I wasn’t disappointed, even though it seemed clear that he wasn’t quite the fighter he once had been.
In fact, Leonard defeated Lalonde as much on tenacity and toughness as on acumen and artistry.
Leonard weighed in wearing a sweat suit on the morning of the fight. His announced weight was 165lbs. “I didn’t want to tell anyone, but I had weights in each pocket,” Leonard told the post-fight press conference. His actual weight, he said, was 159½ lbs. Lalonde scaled 167lbs.
Although Leonard eventually won by knockout, he had to fight for it. Lalonde had come to win. He knocked Leonard down in the fourth round and actually shook him in the ninth, the round in which Lalonde was floored twice and KO’d.
The fighter from the Canadian prairies went down swinging. One of the judges even had Lalonde in front, which seemed odd; the other two judges had Leonard ahead, though not by huge margins.
Leonard’s hand speed and combinations gave him the advantage, but Lalonde’s right hand was a threat. And for the first four rounds, a major surprise looked possible.
A pleasant breeze blew in from the desert as the fight got under, and it was immediately clear that this was not going to be a walkover for Leonard.
Lalonde’s height, reach and awkwardness were giving Leonard problems and Sugar Ray was wary of the Canadian fighter’s right hand. To the surprise of many, Lalonde was winning the early rounds. He poked out his long left hand and threw the right hand whenever he thought he had the chance to land it.
The fourth round was thrilling, and it was a round that revealed Leonard’s championship heart and fighting spirit.
Lalonde finally landed the right hand he’d been looking for, catching Leonard high up on the head and dropping him near a neutral corner. The arena was in an uproar.
Leonard was up quickly and he fired back after taking the mandatory eight count. Lalonde landed the right hand again but Leonard took the punch well. And now there was a fierce urgency about Leonard’s fighting. He was starting to catch and hurt Lalonde. Two of the judges made the fourth a 10-9 round, even though Lalonde had scored a knockdown.
That fourth round, which had started so promisingly for the underdog, was the turning point. It was as if the knockdown had woken Leonard up. “He was starting to move in on Lalonde now, not trying to be slick or cute,” I wrote in my report for Boxing News.
Jabs and hooks sent Lalonde’s long, blond locks flying around. Right hands crashed home. The technical superiority of Leonard was coming to the fore. The old boxing expression “class tells” came to mind.
Lalonde was caught up in a fight where things were happening too fast, overwhelming his ability to react. And Leonard was now fighting like a man who felt he couldn’t lose. He was punishing Lalonde, even having fun.
At one point, Leonard stuck out his chin as if inviting Lalonde to hit it, then pulled it away in “Now you see it, now you don’t” fashion.
Leonard’s trainer, Janks Morton (long-serving Angelo Dundee was left behind), had told us before the fight that this would be a “professor against an elementary-school student”, and it was certainly looking that way from round five onwards. Lalonde did land a couple of right hands but without seeming to affect Leonard.
We saw Leonard’s mean streak come out when, at the end of the seventh round, he walked to Lalonde’s corner and gave him a hard stare. “I wanted to remind him of the round he’d just had,” Leonard explained afterwards.
Lalonde’s needling, the “old welterweight” jibes, had noticeably irritated Leonard, who declined to shake his opponent’s hand at the weigh-in. Now it was payback time.
Although Lalonde gamely attempted to rally in the eighth, landing some punches and even winning the round on one judge’s card, Leonard steadied him with a left hook.
Still, Lalonde had one last big effort left in him. He landed one of his better right hands in the ninth round and he threw all he had in a last, desperate roll of the dice. A right uppercut seemed to rock Sugar Ray. And then Leonard came on again, backing Lalonde up. A left hook floored Lalonde heavily, and that was basically that.
Lalonde picked himself up but really had nothing left and, back to the ropes, he was an easy target.
Leonard went in for the finish the way he had done against Thomas Hearns in their superfight seven years earlier, the punches flowing.
A left hook blasted Lalonde to the canvas, his gum shield spilling from his mouth, and referee Steele waved the finish after two minutes, 30 seconds of the round. There was no need to count; Lalonde was out. But he had given Leonard a far better fight than many expected.
Leonard was gracious towards Lalonde after the fight. “He proved everyone wrong, but not me,” Leonard told the post-fight press conference. “I knew he could fight.”
Lalonde said he felt it was anybody’s fight at all times. “But I waited to land the right hand and he got busier than me.
“I lost to a great fighter.”
Great fighter indeed.
