Commentary : In Boxing, It’s Color of Money That Wins Out

It’s an unhappy commentary--not just on boxing but on America in 1988.

It’s 41 years since Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball and 24 years since passage of the Civil Rights Act. There has been open seating on buses and at lunch counters for years.

Even so, in American sports in the 1980s, some ugly little reminders remain, particularly in the murky commerce of professional boxing.

This week, we learned that Sugar Ray Leonard will fight one Donny (Golden Boy) Lalonde, a Canadian.

Lalonde has as much business in the ring with Sugar Ray Leonard as Pee-Wee Herman. But of course he does have business in the ring with Sugar Ray Leonard, because he’s white.

What is to be made of this? When you attend a mixed boxing bout, white vs. black, and the white boxer is invariably cheered louder than the black boxer, what does it mean?

It means that race sells. Race is box office.

As we’ve seen this week, when it gets down to the nub, it matters not necessarily how well you can fight, but rather what color you are.

What we have here is a subtle but plain form of employment discrimination by color. There are middleweights who are being denied fair opportunity for a big payday with Leonard, who is black, because they are black.

It’s almost as if it’s 1958 and Leonard is running a whites-only lunch counter in Birmingham. Any problem with troublemakers such as Thomas Hearns or Michael Nunn, and Bull Connor and his dogs are only a phone call away.

Leonard-Lalonde. They’ll promote the hell out of this one, for Lalonde’s World Boxing Council light-heavyweight title and the new super-middleweight title.

And everyone will make a ton.

They’ll tell you in posters, TV and newspaper ads and at press conferences that this is Sugar Ray’s dream bout, the one in which he gets the chance to fulfill his dream of his fourth and fifth world titles.

Nonsense.

This is the dream bout in which he gets another monster payday against a marginal opponent. Leonard has won two, not three, legitimate world championships, at welterweight and middleweight. Those two achievements alone put him in the Hall of Fame. The other one, junior-middleweight, is a fractional title.

This is about race and money, period. It’s as plain as black and white. If Donny Lalonde were black, he wouldn’t have a prayer of pulling this off.

Personal opinion: Leonard’s upset victory over Marvin Hagler in 1987, after essentially a four-year layoff, was the greatest achievement by any American athlete in the 1980s.

But Ray, Donny Lalonde?

What we have here is the perfect set-up. When Hagler retired, Sugar Ray lost his meal ticket. So Leonard and his attorney, Mike Trainer, looked for a guy who figured to attract lots of attention, preferably a guy Leonard figured to beat.

Heeeere’s Donny!

Donny is perfect, folks. He’s a champion, he’s tall, blond, rangy, slow, has a nice right hand, a sensational smile and poor hand speed.

Lalonde won the WBC light-heavyweight title last May by knocking out a washed-up Leslie Stewart in Trinidad. Before that he knocked out Eddie Davis and won a decision over Mustafa Hamsho, who was fighting during the Ford Administration.

In 1985, Lalonde was knocked out by someone named Willie Edwards.

The WBC--which gets a fat sanctioning fee--loved this one so so much it announced recently that it was creating a new division, super-middleweight, 168 pounds.

Here are four guys who should be given the opportunity for a big payday, four guys turned away from Sugar Ray’s lunch counter: Iran Barkley, Hearns, Sumbu Kalambay and Nunn. All four are world-class middleweights.

What real boxing fan could possibly say he’d rather see Leonard-Lalonde than Leonard-Hearns II? Come on, Ray, Barkley and Kalambay are champions right now, in your weight class.

OK, we know you’re a smart businessman and that you wouldn’t even think about getting in the ring with Michael Nunn, because you know you’d lose.

Lalonde is supposed to get something in seven figures for this. Trainer, says Leonard could make more than the $11 million he earned when he beat Hagler.

And there isn’t anyone in the sport who would argue the point that if Leonard did fight Barkley, Hearns, Kalambay or Nunn, none would make nearly as much money as Lalonde is going to make.

“If Lalonde were black, with his record and his accomplishments, this fight would never have been considered,” Said Don Fraser, longtime Southern California boxing promoter.

“And if Lalonde were a great black fighter, Leonard wouldn’t fight him anyway.”

Vinny Ferguson, until recently Barkley’s manager, said Barkley has sparred with Lalonde in New York gyms.

“Lalonde can’t fight--Iran handled him,” he said.

It’s said all the time by boxing people: “Can you imagine how much money Tyson would make if he was white?”

Yes, race sells.

Let’s take a look at amateur boxing.

There are 12 members of the U.S. Olympic boxing team. Eleven are black, and then there is Todd Foster, who is white.

During the television coverage of the Olympics, and assuming that Foster lasts beyond the quarterfinals of the tournament, keep a pad and pen by the TV. Keep track of which Olympic team member gets the most air time.

It probably will be Foster.