Prominent in Sugar Ray’s Corner: Juanita Leonard

“I feel a little more comfortable about him going into this fight than I’ve ever felt about him going into any fight,” Juanita Leonard said. “I don’t know why. I don’t know if that’s some sort of sign, or something.”

She hadn’t wanted her man Ray to fight again. But she understood--he wanted to fight Marvelous Marvin Hagler. This is what he wanted more than anything.

“Of course, I worry about it. To be involved with a person like Ray, as I am, care for a person like that, you worry.”

Sun streamed through the large windows of their Potomac, Md., house. It was a perfect winter day. She sipped a half cup of coffee and leaned back into the middle of the big sofa. She wore a bright yellow sweater, and jeans. Her hair was pulled back. She felt good, even if her husband was back in boxing.

“I feel pretty comfortable, although I had decided in my mind, and that’s still the way it stands, that I don’t want him to fight. I really don’t. I didn’t want him to, and I still don’t.

“But I look at it this way. If I were an entertainer, or if I were in Ray’s shoes, and I had a goal, I had a determination to do something that I really wanted to do, and I go to somebody I really love and trust and depend on and say I want to do this, if that person should deny me the chance of accomplishing something that I want to accomplish, it’s not a good thing.

“So I put myself in Ray’s shoes and I say, ‘How would I feel?’ I would want Ray to respect my decision on what I have to do to accomplish something in my life. And I think he would. So I have to give him the same respect.

“I respect Ray’s decision and his opinions about things. He’s made all the right decisions in the past. That’s the way I look at it. That’s the way I’m going into this fight. Just keep my fingers crossed and hope everything comes out the way we want it to.”

To her, her man looks in fighting shape. She knows something about this because she has been around Leonard’s gym enough, seen him spar enough, watched him ease off in retirement, seen him come back, working faithfully since last April. Now she sees a man she thinks is big enough, tough enough to handle Hagler.

Her husband was home for the weekend three weeks ago--a little vacation from his South Carolina training camp.

“He’s in such good shape,” Juanita Leonard said. “He’s just really gotten himself so prepared that he felt he could take a couple of days off and come home.

“I took a long look at his body,” she continued, “and I could not believe that this was my husband. Gosh, I think he looks better now than he did when I first met him, when he first started fighting professionally. He looks a lot better now than he has ever looked going into a fight.

“It’s just phenomenal the way he has built himself. He’s given me incentive--I’m into body-building now. I’m so sore. Yesterday I was working out.

“I’ve just never seen his body in such good shape.”

Leonard fought his last fight, against Kevin Howard, in May 1984, at 149 pounds. A welterweight, Leonard is moving up to challenge for the 160-pound title.

“He left here at 168 pounds the other day,” Juanita said. “But that was because when he was home he didn’t do any running, he didn’t do any working out. He called me the day after he had gotten back and he said he had run that morning and after running that he was down to 163.”

He plans to weigh about 158 for the fight.

He’s fast approaching top physical condition. His mind is said to be fixed on Hagler, with the result that his whole being is, in the words of a colleague, “at peace.”

Mentally, he was not ready for Kevin Howard.

“Mentally, I couldn’t see him being ‘into’ that fight,” Juanita said. “Because there were so many things going on. At that point I was hospitalized a lot because of my pregnancy. He was concerned about me because I was due any time.” It was their second child, Jarrel. “It was very tough on Ray. I was very, very sick. I had to spend maybe four months of my nine months in the hospital. So he was really very concerned about that.

“There were some other problems that took his mind away from it. Just all around, little things that pick at you and take your mind away from what you have to do.

“This time around I can see the difference.”

For one thing, she is actively helping him, “managing the camp,” taking care of details. She’s been to the Hilton Head camp, she’ll be going back, she keeps in daily contact. She suspected it would come to this.

“Up until about a month before he announced that he wanted to come back and fight Hagler, I had definite thoughts that he wouldn’t go back to the ring,” she said. “That’s just the way things were. We had accepted that, and that’s the way we were going to be. We had built our life around that.

“But the month before he announced it, he started talking about it; I mean, a lot. Then he asked me one day, ‘What do you think if . . . ? Do you think I could . . . ?’ Then he came home one day, he says, ‘Just say, just say I wanted to go back to fight Hagler, what would you say?’ I said, ‘I just don’t even want to discuss it, Ray. Don’t even talk to me about it. I don’t want to hear it.’

“So he didn’t talk to me.”

He simply went out and announced it a couple of days later. He had just finished attending a news conference in Mayor Marion Barry’s office for a fund-raising dinner when he told a reporter he’d like to fight Hagler. That evening he went on television and said the same thing. Juanita was watching, getting her husband’s news for the first time.

“I go, ‘Ooooh. I don’t believe it.’

“As a matter of fact, I called the station up. I said, ‘Are you trying to kill me? You’re doing a damn good job of it, dear.’ ”

What thoughts will she be taking to Las Vegas?

“I like both of them. I think Hagler’s a pretty neat guy. I really do. I don’t want anybody to get hurt, and I wish they both could come out on top, and I think both of them will eventually. They’re two great men, they’re two great fighters, they have a lot ahead of them, young men with great futures.

“But I feel like Ray’s got the strength and the ability and the techniques to beat Hagler, whereas I think Hagler has the same. Of course, I want Ray to win. I do think Ray has the ability to beat Hagler.”

Despite several eye examinations, Leonard is still asked about possible risk to his eyes by fighting Hagler. In 1982, Leonard was operated on for a detached retina of the left eye. In 1984, his comeback fight with Howard was postponed three months because of retina weakness in his right eye. Leonard’s wife also has heard the persistent questions.

“I think the people who are asking, or who want to know about it, are concerned, really concerned, about Ray’s eyes,” she said. “They say, it would be a shame to have him get up there in the ring and to fight and to go blind.

“But I tell you, I don’t worry about that. I don’t want his fans to worry about it because that’s not true. If that was so, I would do anything I could to stop Ray from going into the ring. I would not let him go into the ring if I thought there was a chance that he would lose his eye.

“He’s been checked by the best doctors, ophthalmologists, in the world. And they think, no problem. You have to trust somebody. And it’s been said by these doctors that the eye is not a worry. It’s really not a problem.

“I would worry more about him twisting an ankle or breaking a finger or getting his nose broken.”

If Leonard should spring an upset and defeat Hagler, wouldn’t he give Hagler a rematch?

“If Ray beats Hagler--let me rephrase that--when Ray beats Hagler, I think if Hagler wanted a second shot, I think Ray would be a gentleman enough to give it to him.”

And if Leonard loses, what then? Would he still be restless in retirement? April 6 will be here and gone quickly; the spotlight again will be snuffed.

“God, I don’t know,” said Juanita, leaning forward. “We’ve discussed it and he says that he only wants this one fight because after this one fight there’s really not much of a challenge out there for him, enough to go back and to do this all over again. I think he’s very sincere about that.

“But I also think that Ray is somebody who likes to be on top. He likes to be the best at what he does. And I think that’s one reason why if there were a big enough challenge out there for him after this Hagler fight I wouldn’t be surprised if he went back.

“But I don’t think there’s anything out there after Hagler big enough for him to want to go out. It’s got to be something really challenging, it’s got to be something that’s going to get Ray up where he’s going to say, ‘I want this and I want it bad.’ ”

If there were?

“I would be inclined to think, yes. If there were a big enough challenge.”

How would her husband take defeat against Hagler?

“I don’t think Ray would feel too bad if, say, that Hagler did win and Ray wanted a rematch and Hagler said no, I’m not giving you a rematch. I don’t think Ray would feel too bad because he still would have accomplished a part of what he wanted to do, and that’s fight Hagler.

“If he was really defeated, he would accept it. He would have no other choice but to accept it. If you’re defeated, you’re defeated, and who can gripe about that?”

She doesn’t think it will end that way, but she’ll be with him come what may, after the fight is over.