Ralph Wiley / Sports Illustrated

“Can Sugar Ray Leonard beat Marvelous Marvin Hagler?”

Sugar Ray Robinson didn’t answer. It might have been that he couldn’t answer. That would seem most likely. There is the advancing Alzheimer’s disease to consider, and the medication he is regularly given. He also has diabetes and hypertension. Beyond all this, there are the terrible lessons that 201 fights over 25 years have etched on his mind. Finally, there is Millie, his wife of 22 years. Any or all of these could be reasons why Robinson didn’t answer. But it also could have been that he chose not to answer. The one incontrovertible truth is that Sugar Ray Robinson earned his silence the hard way. He didn’t have to say anything. He left all the answers in the ring.

The 65-year-old former nonpareil welterweight and five-time middleweight champion smiled, then looked toward his lap. He was watched by Millie Robinson, who sat nearby in the modest offices of the Sugar Ray Robinson Youth Foundation, on Crenshaw Boulevard in the mid- Wilshire section of Los Angeles. It was November 1986. The board of directors of the foundation was meeting. Ray sat at the head of the table, his paper plate laden with meat and exotic fruit. He had not taken a bite. He had no appetite. Business was discussed by six other board members, the officers of his legacy. Robinson was oblivious. He was in his own world.

“Ray will still talk, sometimes, a little bit,” Sid Lockitch had said earlier at his office in Century City. Lockitch, an accountant, has been Robinson’s business manager for more than 20 years and is the treasurer of the foundation. “When Millie’s not around, he’ll say a word or two. But even years ago, Ray was always a gentleman. He would never have said that Marvin Hagler is going to beat the crap out of Sugar Ray Leonard. He would have said luck to them both.”

The telephone rang at the foundation office. For Millie.

“Ray, can Leonard beat Hagler?”

Robinson’s smile became even broader, even more vacant. Then he leaned close. “Is he sweeter than me?” he asked, cloaking that once satiny voice in a whisper. I conspired with him.

“No, Ray.”

In the spring of 1987, on Monday, April 6, Ray Leonard (33-1), the former welterweight and junior middleweight champion, fought middleweight champion Marvelous Marvin Hagler (62-2-2) in Las Vegas. Leonard, 31, came into the ring after a layoff of more than 1,000 days and with a surgically repaired left eye. The question still hung in the air. Why? Leonard was already known as the greatest welterweight since Robinson. Leonard could never be considered greater than Robinson. Not unless he fought, say, a hundred more times. Certainly not unless he somehow beat Hagler. “I care nothing for history,” Leonard said on the Friday before the fight. So saying, he did the improbable —he beat the bigger, stronger man, just as Muhammad Ali had done, more impressively, against Sonny Liston and George Foreman.

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