AFTER THE GLORY : Ex-Boxer Sonny Ray, 53, Is Painting Cars in Long Beach

In the late 1950s, when his life was grand, Sonny Ray boxed in smoky main events in Chicago Stadium and New York’s Madison Square Garden and on the small oval screens of black and white television sets.

Although never a champion, he was rated fourth among the top 10 light-heavyweights in the world and was popular on TV fight nights sponsored by Pabst Blue Ribbon and Gillette. A newspaper clipping of one of Ray’s bouts described him as stocky, bull-shouldered and with the attacking style of a bulldozer.

Last week, a man with a broom stood without much to do in the King of Color car-painting shop just north of downtown Long Beach. He was Sonny Ray, still bull-shouldered at 53.

He wore a painter’s hat, old brown pants, a green sweater and a tattered jacket. Whiskers the color of iron shavings were on his jaw. His nose looked like a boxer’s nose, although he said it had been broken only once.

As with many ex-fighters, Ray’s memories make the present more bearable.

“I had quite a few fans,” Ray said, his voice hard to hear above the angry din of air hoses that were swooshing grit from just-sanded cars. “Most places I go, yes, people still remember me.”

Ray rose quickly from obscurity to beat such high-ranking fighters as Jesse Bowdry and Eddie Cotton and go on to a 42-12-6 record, but two close losses to Tony Anthony in 1958 and ’59 prevented him from getting a title fight with Archie Moore.

As a boxer, Ray made $120,000, none of which is left.

In the car-painting shop on Long Beach Boulevard, where men in protective hoods and masks work to the beat of Latin music, Ray, a friend of the owner, earns $150 a week. He also gets a monthly military pension of $520.

The world Ray loved--of sweat, fame and smoke from the big cigars of the ringside fat cats--has been replaced by one of dust and paint fumes. He is surrounded not by friendly fans but by cars that look sinister because they, too, wear masks.

To pass the long days, Ray makes sure the cars are in the right order to go into the paint booth. He also inspects the sanding jobs and leans against his broom in the shop’s back doorway, the boundary between fumes and fresh air. From there he watches the sun dip beyond the telephone wires, watches over the alley for car thieves and dreams of returning to a gym.

“This keeps me occupied,” said Ray, who has worked at the shop about eight months.

For almost 23 years and with no pay except his pension, Ray lived in a room at the Seaside Gym in Long Beach and trained fighters. He ran the gym for five years until the lease ran out last March.

Although the years have added to his stomach, Ray still exercises and his weight of 182 pounds is only slightly higher than when he fought. His fists have the consistency of stone.

The whites of his sad dark eyes were yellow and murky, but his thoughts were clear. “I suffered no permanent injury to my knowledge,” said Ray, who was knocked out four times.

Ray was typical of the boxers of his era.

“I would come forward (at an opponent), move around and counterpunch,” Ray said. “Years ago the crowd really enjoyed the fine art of boxing. They would applaud the savvy and the footwork. Now they enjoy the brutality of it. They want to see some blood.”

Raised in Chicago, Ray aspired to be a major league baseball player. An infielder, he was a Cubs’ farmhand and played in the minor leagues at the Triple-A level. “I could field but couldn’t hit,” said Ray, who was drafted by the Army in 1949. When he returned after three years of combat in Korea, he gave up baseball and took up boxing.

“After a year’s training, I was a pro,” Ray said. “After three fights I was in the top 10 in the world.”

But soon after he attained prominence, his career began to slide. “I had manager problems and wife problems,” Ray said. “I didn’t train properly, I started drinking.” He fought not very successfully in England, Italy, Australia and South America. He retired in 1961, made a brief comeback, then hung up his gloves for good in 1963.

“You miss having fans coming up to you, shaking your hand and getting your autograph,” he said. “I miss the smell of the gym, seeing the people around ringside, the sportswriters, matchmakers, promoters.”

While Ray relived the past, a young man walked by in the alley, said hello to Ray and in jest struck a fighting pose. Ray smiled, clenched his fists in return and said, “I can’t do it anymore.”

Ray, who shares a $480-a-month apartment with his girlfriend, did not smile a lot at the shop. One’s sunniest days, he firmly believes, occur before age 50.

He said his real name is Rogers Moten. “When I was playing baseball, they called me Sonny because I was always happy and jolly,” Ray said.

Without boxing, his heart and soul, that isn’t the case now.

“I’m not totally satisfied, but I accept life as it is,” said Ray, who plans to go to Pittsburgh in January and look for a gym to run. “I have real close friends who have helped me over the years.”

He pulled out his wallet and showed his friends’ cards. Otherwise, the wallet was empty.

Ray put it back in his pocket and, after a visitor left, became a solitary figure again, standing in the sunny doorway next to his broom.

About 6 this Monday night, Ray, who said he has consumed more liquor in the last five or six years than he had in all his previous years, took a work break. He walked a few blocks to the Dragon Inn on Anaheim Street.

The tavern was decorated with wreaths and illuminated by beer signs, Christmas lights and a large-screen TV.

The sportswriter with Ray placed an old photo on the bar of a short-haired Ray reaching out with a long right in a fight against Tony Anthony in New York in 1959.

“Wow,” said the bartender, when informed that the young fighter and the man to whom she had just served a beer were the same. She shook Ray’s hand.

Ray reflected on his life:

“It was great. I had a lot of fun. Got to dine with the kings and queens. I enjoyed myself. I thought one day I’d be a rich man. But things happen. You can miscalculate things and put too much trust in too many people. A lot of people can give you wrong advice. When you’re young you’re not wise enough to detect that the advice might not be good for you.

“Within three months I had $18,000. You think it’s going to keep coming forever, especially when you’re winning fights or losing to top guys by split decisions.

“I spent a lot. I spent $5,000 on my wedding, though my manager said I didn’t need that kind of wedding.”

When he walks into the Dragon Inn or other places now, it’s often alone, and he never can quite get over that.

“I really miss 10 or 12 people going places with me, saying, ‘I’m with Sonny Ray, blah blah blah,’ ” Ray said. “And newspapermen coming up and talking to me.”

He became one in a long line of boxers who got caught up and eventually done in by fame.

“I thought I was one of the greatest persons in the world,” he said. “Everyone wanted me to go to a party or to one of those swanky nightclubs on (Chicago’s) North Side. I’d be there till 4 or 5 in the morning.

“Once I started going down, all those invitations left. By that time, my marriage was gone.”

Ray was permanently separated from his wife in 1961. He has two grown daughters.

“My life is behind me,” he said as he drank from a fresh beer.

But the recognition he still gets sustains him. “Everywhere I go, people know me,” Ray said.

That softens the reality of the guys back at King of Color saying to him, “Look at you, this should be your shop.”

While a man at the bar looked at Ray’s photo, the old boxer volunteered: “I worked (sparred) with Ezzard Charles and Sonny Liston, Archie Moore, all those guys.”

With the past washing over him, Ray semed happy and jolly again. Then he said it was time to go. He had to get back to the shop, where they would be painting late.