I just recently read it and I thought there were some interesting views and anecdotes in it. All in all, it is difficult to know what you should think about the book since Ray sounds very sincere and honest, but he is also a known fake. * Leonard believes strongly in psychological games and even biorhythmics. Against Hearns, he decided to jump up and down during the staredown so Hearns wouldn't be able to look down on him and he wouldn't appear as small. Against Hagler, he made a point of always in the center of the ring before Hagler in every round. Hagler had a habit of doing that and Leonard wanted to break his rhythm. Also when their fight was first announced, he wore a padded jacked to appear bigger, to put Hagler off. * He also mentions that Hagler was as nervous as he was himself before their bout, even though he didn't want to show it. When Leonard threw his first left, Hagler winced and covered up. That gave Leonard a boost too. * With biorhythm, Ray always felt it important to find the right kind of feeling before going in the ring. He often woke up in the night before his big fights and went to shadowbox in front of the mirror, before he found the 'Sugar Ray look' (eye of the tiger I guess) from his eyes. * The first Duran fight was the only time he couldn't find the right feeling before the bout, he said he didn't feel good before the fight. He also noticed Duran had the same problem before the rematch (sounds like an excuse all fighters make) * Leonard always wanted to get inside his opponents head, but against Duran it didn't work out. Instead, he notices, Duran schooled him the first time. First time they met, they posed with soft gloves. Duran then began jabbing Leonard to the body with the glove, harder and harder, until Leonard lost his temper, which was just what Duran had hoped for. Duran was extremely rude before the bout and Leonard had it in his mind that he was always supposed to be the nice guy, acting like a gentleman. When he began to respond the insults in kind, he said, it was like trying to beat Ali in battle of wits. * Leonard gave credit for Duran for making him fight Duran's fight. He did this with the prefight antics. Leonard wanted to punish him so bad he fought flat-footed against the advice of his corner. When he realized he couldn't overpower Duran, it was too late. * Leonard pushed for the quick rematch since he knew Duran had habit of gaining weight. However, he did not make demands about the 21 ft ring, in the book he says he was glad to hear it though. * The ring was 21 ft., HutHut * The idea about humiliating Duran came from Ray's brother Roger. Roger thought if Ray would be able to make Duran look ridiculous, Duran wouldn't know what to do. Leonard didn't believe the strategy at first, but after a good start gave it a try in the 7th. * Angelo Dundee didn't really train Leonard. He usually came to Leonard's camp a week or so before the bout. Leonard does praise him as a great cornerman however, Angelo was able to give good advice and also found ways to make him fight harder (especially Leonard mentions the You are blowing it, son -speach) * Funny story about Ali. They first met in '76 when Leonard was still an amateur and Ali was the reigning champ. They sat at a dinner table. Out of nowhere, Ali asked "How long do you stop having pussy before a fight", as if he was asking Leonard to pass the salt. "About two days", Leonard answered when he got his breath going again. "Two days? You're a baaad n*gger." Ali said, without looking up. * He couldn't really explain all his comebacks. When he announced his retirements, he was sure that they would last. Only the retirement after Howard bout he realized quickly was a mistake.. He did it since he was so disappointed with his performance. Watching fights as an analyst made him comeback in '97, the guys just looked inferior to him from ringside. * The ring was 21 ft
:: Plus if you slow down the remaining footage you can see the glitches where the extra three feet has been doctored out
No way that ring was only one foot above regulation. You could perform the whole walking with dinosaurs stage show in it.
Yeah, there's just no way it's only 1 foot bigger than a standard ring, you'd barely notice. It's clearly significantly bigger than a standard ring, a lot more than 5% bigger.
The rest of his comments about getting people out their 'rhythm' were pretty interesting though.:Thumbs:
Agreed. There is no measureable way to know how much (if any) these things make a difference but i'd guess they sometimes can. The bigger the stakes the more psychology can become involved.
Angelo was saying before the first Duran fight that Ray was going to stand there with him and beat him to the belly where Duran was soft as he didn't do his homework on the sit up table.
One thing I forgot btw was that Leonard believed in watching videos of his opponents for preparation. Some fighters don't watch them at all, some only want to get a general view of the opponent, but Leonard studied his opponents for hours so that he could pick a weakness and then base his strategy on exploiting that
I think it's one of the wisest things a fighter can do. Nowadays it seems only trainers do that. Even then it's often just a general view of the opponent. "He's a southpaw so we should work on fighting against that stance"
One former Finnish pro once told that he doesn't want to watch videos so that he doesn't get influenced too much by them. His idea was that if you try too hard to prepare for how your opponent fights, you become clueless if he changes strategy in your fight. I'm not sure if that guy would have done any better watching videos though, going to the gym might have done the trick for him
I remember reading that before he defended against him, Larry Holmes ordered tapes of Renaldo Snipes to prepare for the match and after watching only a few minutes of footage, he stopped watching them because he was afraid of becoming overconfident. Of course, he outclassed Snipes for almost every second of the fight but he came perilously close to disaster when Snipes landed a million-to-one bomb on his chin and floored him heavily... In typical Holmes fashion, he rode out the storm and beat the challenger into submission a few rounds later
Indeed, one should search high and low for the most considerable grain of salt they can locate before taking Ray's story, just so as to take them at the same time.
