A Perfectionist Retires

As an up & coming amateur boxer (85 straight victories), Sugar Ray Robinson firmly resolved: "They'll never hold a benefit for me." He pursued the dollar with the same single-mindedness that brought him two world championships--the welterweight (147 Ibs.) and middleweight (160 Ibs.) titles--and carried him through 137 professional fights with only three defeats. By last week, worth an estimated $300,000 from shrewd investments (real estate, a bar, a dry-cleaning establishment), he knew that the time had come to quit. Said Sugar Ray, in a flowery farewell to the ring: "I do not feel I can any longer give the public my best as they have come to recognize it, and I know better than anyone else how good I am and what are my limitations."

During his 12-year career, Robinson had few, if any, limitations as a fighting machine. His lightning left was as hardhitting as his right, his footwork as fancy as a ballet dancer's, his defensive skill so impregnable that he was never once knocked out. By any odds, he was the best fighter, pound for pound, of his day.

But his very perfection long kept him from popularity. Not until he was close to the end of his career did he fire the imagination of the fans, who always like a slugger better than a boxing perfectionist. Beaten once on points by Jake La-Motta (in the second of their six matches), Robinson lost his second bout and his middleweight championship to Britain's Randy Turpin in 1951. Some 60,000 turned up at the Polo Grounds for the rematch, the first really big gate Robinson ever attracted. Battered and bleeding, his timing way off, Robinson made a dramatic tenth-round comeback and knocked Turpin out. Robinson's last ambition then was to win the light-heavyweight (175 Ibs.) title from Joey Maxim (see below). Spotting his opponent 15 Ibs., Robinson, 32, had the title all but won when he was felled by heat prostration last September.

Robinson is confident that "I could still cope with whatever competition might arise." But he knows that "I can't move in the ring with the same speed, dispatch and accuracy. My instinct used to guide my hands and feet. Now, the coordination isn't there any more ... I want to step out while my health is good, my judgment and balance unimpaired, and my sense of proportion unmarred."

And no one will ever have to hold a benefit for Sugar Ray. In the months before he finally made up his mind to retire, he had already moved into a new career in show business. His current salary as a tap dancer: a reported $10,000 a week.

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