Sugar's Lumps

World Middleweight Champion Sugar Ray Robinson had fought six fights in six weeks, gadded about Paris and made innumerable personal appearances (TIME, June ii et seq.). His wife Edna Mae was uneasy about him: "Sugar's tired. He's overtrained and overfought." Meanwhile, Britain's Middleweight Champion Randy Turpin, on the eve of the fight of his life, made a soberly restrained prediction: "I think I have a chance." Nevertheless, the odds were 3-1-on Sugar Ray when the men climbed into the ring at Earl's Court in London last week.

Turpin crowded the champion from the opening bell, getting the better of the infighting, jabbing and hooking to keep Robinson constantly off balance. Not until Round Three did Robinson land a solid punch, a bolo left to the jaw. "Get him, Sugar! Get him, Sugar!" shrilled Edna Mae. But 31-year-old Sugar Ray could not get going. His timing was off, his punches were missing the target, his ballet footwork was out of rhythm. In a seventh-round clinch, Turpin butted an ugly gash over Robinson's left eye. At the sight of blood, the crowd sensed an upset and howled for it. Edna Mae changed her line. "You can do it, Sugar! You can do it!"

Disappearing Dynamite. Sugar tried.

In Rounds Nine and Eleven he banged Turpin around, but there was no stopping power in the punches. Muttered a British sportwriter: "I still haven't seen any of that dynamite I've been writing about." By Round Twelve, it was obvious that only a lucky knockout punch could save Robinson's title. Cried Edna Mae: "Hold on, Sugar! Hold on!" By Round 15, Turpin was pummeling the tired champion almost at will. "Don't let him hit you!" screamed Edna Mae. "Take care of yourself!" The uproarious crowd began chanting "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" before the referee even raised the winner's hand. Turpin had soundly trounced the champ who had lost only once before* in 126 professional fights.

The British press, glumly conditioned to watching U.S. boxers flatten Britain's best, crowed with delight. Bragged the Daily Mirror: "Turpin became world champion without any of the hokum that Americans have used to bedazzle and bamboozle their opponents before the fight." London's anti-American, middlebrow New Statesman and Nation felt a primitive thrill: "The local boy from Leamington Spa became the giant-killer and we all felt bigger and better in consequence . . . Europe had risen from the gutter and thrashed the Prince of the Dollar Empire ... Morale rises ... Even the Government becomes our Government and can be sure of re-election on such a morning after."

The Daily Mirror's "hokum" crack was a reference to Robinson's training quarters at Windsor's Star and Garter Hotel, where thousands of curious Britons, acting for all the world like U.S. bobby-soxers, craned and crowded for a glimpse of Robinson and his flamboyant 14-man entourage or a peek at the gaudy fuchsia convertible* parked outside. Turpin, 23, son of a British Guianan and a white British mother, trained in the placid remoteness of Grwych Castle in North Wales.

Home-Town Hero. After the fight, Britons staged a mannerly mob scene for their new champion. Leamington, a quiet resort town once favored by retired Colonel Blimps, turned out 15,000 strong to line the parade route for homecoming Hero Turpin.

It was boxing's biggest upset since 1936, when Max Schmeling knocked out Joe Louis. Louis got his chance for revenge, and battered the agonized, screaming Schmeling to the canvas in the first round. Robinson, who offered no excuses ("In boxing, you win some and lose some"), will also get a return match, tentatively set for New York in September. Said his sister with a shudder: "I don't think I even want to see that fight. Ray will murder him."

* To Jake LaMotta, whom Robinson later beat five times. *Remarked one Briton: "I hear Cadillac has agreed never to paint another like that." His friend, after a thoughtful pause: "No, really? But still, I shouldn't think there'd be many chaps who'd want that color."

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