Sugar Ray Robinson: A Borrowed ID Card, a Pink Cadillac and Pound for Pound

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Sugar Ray Robinson was born Walker Smith Jr. in Ailey, Georgia, in 1921, the son of a farmer. The family moved to Detroit, where his father mixed cement by day and worked in the sewers at night, and at 11 Walker lived on the same block as 17-year-old Joe Louis. At 12 he moved with his mother to Harlem. He dropped out of ninth grade hoping to become a doctor, and at 14, too young for an Amateur Athletic Union card, borrowed one from an older boy named Ray Robinson; a woman in the crowd called his style sweet as sugar. He turned pro in 1940, won his first 40 fights, and took his first loss to Jake LaMotta, who outweighed him by 16 pounds. Sportswriters coined the idea of the best fighter pound for pound to describe him.

Drafted in 1943, he toured with Joe Louis and refused to perform when Black soldiers were barred from watching. In 1944, before shipping to Europe, he vanished from Fort Hamilton and woke on Governors Island claiming amnesia, and received an honorable discharge. He refused mob control of boxing, which delayed his welterweight title until 1946. He beat LaMotta for the middleweight title in 1951, collapsed from heat against Joey Maxim in 1952, retired into song and tap dance, went broke, and returned to win the middleweight crown repeatedly. He fought until 1965, aged 44, finishing with 201 fights and 109 knockouts, and died in 1989 after suffering Alzheimer's disease and diabetes.

• Before his 1947 title defense he dreamed of killing Jimmy Doyle; Doyle died after an eighth-round knockout, and Robinson gave his next four purses to Doyle's mother.
• On a European tour he brought a pink Cadillac, a barber, a voice coach and a man paid to whistle during training, and a French steward's word entourage stuck.
• At Yankee Stadium against Maxim it was 103 degrees in the ring, and the referee was replaced after passing out.
• His left hook against Gene Fullmer in 1957 is still called the perfect punch.
• Muhammad Ali called him the greatest of all time, and Sugar Ray Leonard and Sugar Shane Mosley took his nickname.