But four rounds in, the heavyweights are lumbering around the ring, dancing with the mechanical misery of two circus elephants doing their routine for the hundredth time. And Leonard, who probably understands this part of the sport as well as anyone, can scarcely contain his frustration. "The body," he whispers to me, coaching Clay-Bey under his breath. Then much louder: "He's got to start pounding the body!" The bell rings. In the fifth, few punches are thrown, few punches taken. As Clay-Bey's cornerman applies a cold compress to the fighter's eye, Leonard jumps to his side and says to Clay-Bey's trainer, "Scully, tell him: To the body. Man's got to start hitting the body." He turns away. "Damn," he says.
Although he doesn't really like to talk about it, this is Leonard's second attempt at boxing promotion.
By the start of Round 7, Leonard could be excused for wondering why he'd bothered to promote this particular fight. In fact, the match is looking very much like the kind of halfhearted bout Leonard had complained about to Rebney before their company's launch. Ringside, the fans seem more interested in getting Leonard's autograph than in watching the action. "Not now," says Rebney, playing gatekeeper. Leonard is looking tired and depressed but still intense. And then something happens. With a flurry of busy hands, Clay-Bey starts jabbing and slapping his man off balance, and then, in close, he drives a short, hard right to the head and a looping left to Shufford's kidney. "That's it!" Leonard wails, jumping up from his seat. And for a moment, we see a glimpse of the fire that made Sugar Ray a great boxer.
Shufford stumbles across the canvas, teetering. The crowd senses an end and takes to its feet, chanting: "Clay-Bey! Clay-Bey! Clay-Bey!" The bell rings. Leonard flashes a smile that seems to say, This is what it's all about. When it's done right, boxing makes other professional sports look like Yahtzee.
Clay-Bey wins on a unanimous decision, and at the end of the night, the fighters nurse their wounds in the broom closet that doubles as a locker room. Clay-Bey is by himself in a corner, stuffing his clothes into a tattered bag. Leonard and Rebney hustle around shaking the last hands, finalizing the last details with Oklahoma's boxing commissioner and the tribal members who own the casino. Every so often, Leonard pulls away to speak privately with Rebney. The conversations are always serious, almost paranoid. They both say again and again: You're never quite sure when someone might come from behind, spot a weakness or an undotted i in the contract or an unhappy fighter in the stable, and plunge an ice pick into your back.
Still, the night has been a relative success, and on January 3, 2003, Sugar Ray Leonard Boxing seems to be running on all cylinders. ESPN seems ready to extend the four-event contract that its boxing director, Bob Yalen, had initially awarded SRLB purely on the strength of Leonard's name and his promise that his prefight publicity work would pack houses and convince venue operators to pay higher fees to host events. The thinking was that those fees would enable SRLB to pay fighters more, which meant fighters would be willing to risk tougher fights. And the tougher fights would make for better television -- which, to date, SRLB seems to be providing. "Ray has hustled his ass off and put on shows that have generally rated better than the ESPN2 average," says Yalen. Adds Dan Rafael, boxing writer for USA Today, "There's no doubt that most of their shows have been very solid, a cut above the rest."
In SRLB's first full year, 2002, it posted $2.5 million in revenue and a small profit. It signed hard-hitting "Baby" Joe Mesi, an unbeaten (then 210) white heavyweight from Buffalo -- a marketer's dream. And Mesi's first fight under contract in April had been a much-heralded success as SRLB more than sold out the 8,464-seat University at Buffalo Alumni Arena. Prior to the Mesi fight, the largest crowd to attend a boxing event there had been 5,500 for a card that featured Riddick Bowe in 1989.
With a business plan projecting revenue of $21.8 million in 2003, Leonard and Rebney are telling their story to would-be investors. The two men need capital, they say, to bring aboard more help; SRLB has just eight employees. And a promoter can expect to invest upward of $1 million -- the bulk on signing bonuses, purses, marketing -- before a young heavyweight pays off. Rebney sleeps about four hours a night, he says, and claims he's on his way to a heart attack. Leonard can't remember when he traveled so much, or put in so many hours. But the story Leonard and Ray have been telling investors of an unblemished promotional company headed by an unblemished athletic icon come to clean up his sport is the sanctioned version of events.
As is often the case in business, there is another version.
THE UNSANCTIONED STORY
One thing that both Leonard and Rebney don't necessarily volunteer to potential investors is that this is their second attempt to launch a promotion company. In fact, the reason it took four years to get Sugar Ray Leonard Boxing off the ground is that they first tried something called Sugar Ray Leonard Management.
That effort, begun in late 1996, had Leonard and Rebney teaming up with a former Leonard manager, Seth Ersoff, and a former Leonard agent, Michael Simon. It ended disastrously in litigation, with Ersoff and Simon alleging in a still-pending lawsuit that when they first went into business with Leonard he was not at all a squeaky-clean legend with limitless potential but a washed-up has-been who'd been struggling with marital problems and substance abuse. They claim that they helped him back onto his feet and back into the industry he loves -- efforts for which they were summarily jilted. In the end, they claim the ex-champ fired them to avoid paying commissions and to remove them from the boxing company they helped create. By 2000, according to the suit, Leonard and Rebney ditched Ersoff and Simon and, without telling them, reincorporated in a different location as Sugar Ray Leonard Boxing rather than Sugar Ray Leonard Management. Leonard declines to discuss the suit.
