Boxing : Leonard Would Be Perfect for This Job

The sight of Sugar Ray Leonard striding quickly out of a meeting room after a news conference at Caesars Palace Friday was both predictable and sad.

Leonard, former Olympic and world pro champion, stung by criticism that he had used the Olympic team boxing trials tournament last week for recruiting purposes, resigned his post as “special adviser to the Olympic staff.”

The sad part of the whole story is that for all the acrimonious conversation here this week about who should be considered for the 1988 U.S. Olympic boxing team head coaching position, the fact is that there really is one person with outstanding, impeccable credentials for the job, and that person is Sugar Ray Leonard.

Perhaps one day, maybe in 1992, it might happen. But it can never happen until Leonard separates himself from pro boxing, and even Leonard knows that now.

He wanted to be the Olympic team head coach, and said so, six months ago. But since he was still active as a pro boxer and was putting together a stable of pro boxers, the U.S. Amateur Boxing Federation wasn’t willing to go that far. But the federation’s president, Col. Don Hull, gave him the job of “special adviser to the Olympic staff,” and then didn’t define it.

One reason for his resignation Friday, Leonard said, was because “I couldn’t answer the question, ‘Ray, what will be your role with the Olympic team?’ because no one ever told me what my role would be.”

True, name Sugar Ray Leonard as an Olympic team head coach and you have every amateur boxing coach in America hanging up Sugar Ray Leonard dart boards. The howls of outrage would sound something like this: “Hey, I’ve been coaching amateur boxers for 30 years--what are Leonard’s coaching credentials?”

But the fact is, Leonard is something special. He’s magnetic and young boxers respect him. He enjoys talking about the “family feeling” his 1976 Olympic teammates had, and can talk for hours about training and discipline.

He could be a sensational coach.

But for now, the timing was all wrong, and he was given an unworkable job.

Leonard’s exit Friday was a little rough around the edges.

When he explained that he had been selling T-shirts at the Olympic trials so he could one day pay for his son’s college education, one didn’t know whether to burst out laughing or bite his hand.

Here’s a guy who made $11 million in one night , for beating Marvelous Marvin Hagler . . . and he needs T-shirt money to get Ray Jr. through college?

Leonard didn’t say so, but he must have been stung by criticism that he’d done nothing to help the Olympic boxing program before 1988.

When he let it out that he would like to coach the Olympic team months before Hull made him a “special adviser,” the subject came up in a conversation with Jim Fox, the USA/ABF executive director.

“You’re talking about a guy who doesn’t even return our phone calls,” Fox said. Months later, after Hull made the appointment, it was learned that Fox spent 30 hours beforehand, trying to talk Hull out of it.

After the Los Angeles Olympics, the federation appointed Leonard to a seat on the USA/ABF Foundation, a board that determines how to spend money earned from the L.A. Olympics.

In four years, he has attended one meeting.

Nevertheless, the USA/ABF would do well to hang on to Ray Leonard’s phone number.

If one day he turns his back on pro boxing and makes a total commitment to amateur boxing, he could prove to be, if given a chance, an outstanding Olympic team coach.

It’s rising out of the desert like some colossal skeleton.

The Golden Nugget is up to 20 stories and rising. It’s Steve Wynn’s $565-million strip project, a younger brother of his Glitter Gulch Golden Nugget, going up next to Caesars Palace.

When they broke ground, the Golden Nugget was supposed to be the world’s largest hotel, with something like 4,100 rooms. But the project was scaled back, and now is planned as 21 stories and 3,054 rooms.

The grand opening isn’t scheduled until December of 1989, but Wynn’s palace is already in the boxing news.

Bob Halloran, who for a decade negotiated for Caesars Palace for major boxing shows such as Leonard-Hagler, Larry Holmes-Muhammad Ali, Holmes-Gerry Cooney and Hagler-Tommy Hearns, jumped ship recently. He left Caesars to go to work for the Golden Nugget.

“Steve Wynn and I talked for several days, and he laid out a (boxing) program that got me pretty excited,” Halloran said.

Halloran said Wynn showed him plans for a 17,000- to 18,000-seat arena, possibly covered, suitable for boxing and entertainment shows.

That groan you just heard comes from the executive offices of Caesars and the Las Vegas Hilton. They figure the site fee costs of major boxing shows just went up a couple of million or two, with Wynn now bidding against not only the Hilton and Caesars, but also Donald Trump, in Atlantic City, N.J.