Sugar Ray Robinson fought under a borrowed name and never gave it back
At 14, Walker Smith Jr. was too young for the amateur boxing card he needed, so he used the ID of a lad called Ray Robinson who had quit the sport. The name stuck. After a woman in Watertown, New York, called him sweet as sugar, he became Sugar Ray Robinson, often rated the best boxer ever.
He was born in 1921 in Ailey, Georgia, the youngest of three children of a farmer who moved the family to Detroit and later worked as a cement mixer and sewer worker six days a week. As a boy Robinson lived on the same Detroit block as a teenage Joe Louis. At 12 he moved with his mother to Harlem, and after dropping out of high school in ninth grade he abandoned hopes of becoming a doctor for the ring. He married at 16 and had a son, Ronnie.
His amateur record is usually given as 85 wins without defeat, 69 by knockout, though that is disputed; he took New York Golden Gloves titles in 1939 and 1940. He turned professional in October 1940 at 19. In 1941 he beat the reigning champion Sammy Angott in a non-title bout and outpointed Fritzie Zivic before 20,551 fans at Madison Square Garden. In 1942 he first met his great rival Jake LaMotta, winning a unanimous decision despite giving away more than 12 pounds, and was named fighter of the year.
From 1943 to 1951 he went 91 fights unbeaten, and by 1951 his record stood at 129 wins, one loss and two draws. He held the world welterweight crown from 1946 and took the middleweight title in 1951. He retired in 1952, returned two and a half years later, regained the middleweight belt in 1955 and in 1958, by beating Carmen Basilio, became the first man to win a divisional world title five times. He won fighter of the year again for 1951, nine years after his first.
Flamboyant outside the ring, he is credited with inventing the modern sporting entourage. A later entertainment career flopped, and he struggled for money from his 1965 retirement until his death in 1989. The Ring ranked him first among the best fighters of its previous 80 years in 2002, and the US Postal Service put him on a stamp in 2006.
Source: Sugar Ray Robinson
