Let’s Hope Leonard Finally Has Message

Sugar Ray Leonard retired for the fifth time Saturday night, after Hector “Macho” Camacho pummeled him so badly in the fifth round of their fight at the Atlantic City Convention Center that the referee had to put a stop to it. Let’s hope Leonard means it this time.

When Leonard walked into the ring shortly before midnight - to a crowd response that was favorable, but could hardly be called electric - there surely were people who looked at his trim, seemingly well-toned body and had flashbacks to the great fights he had against the likes of Thomas Hearns and Marvin Hagler and Wilfred Benitez.

Others didn’t. Others were thinking about Leonard’s previous fight, the one against Terry Norris in February 1991. That fight, which represented Leonard’s fourth comeback attempt, was pitiful, pathetic, horrible for any Leonard fan - for any boxing fan - to watch. After that performance, it was hard to imagine Leonard ever stepping into the ring again. And his decision to do so - at age 40, after six years of inactivity - was both sad and disturbing.

So, too, was his performance in the ring Saturday night. Boxing with what he said later was a torn right calf muscle so debilitating his doctors encouraged him not to fight, and boxing without any of his old aggression, Ray got knocked down in the first round and again in the fifth, shortly before referee Joe Cortez called a halt to the fight.

Leonard was off balance, tentative and awkward in the ring.

And the end was downright ugly. As Camacho pinned him against the ropes and battered him with a series of punches, Leonard almost seemed in danger of getting seriously hurt. Ringside, in the first row of seats, Leonard’s second wife, Bernadette, threw her right arm in front of her face, as if she were trying to ward off the blows herself.

“No, Sugar. No, Sugar,” Bernadette wailed, her eyes still glued to her husband, despite her obvious desire not to watch.

Somebody should have said those words - “No, Sugar” - long before Saturday night. There are few things in sport sadder than watching a once-great champion lose to a man who never will be even remotely close to his equal. Leonard has a good life, a beautiful family, and - according to his own insistence - no financial problems that would have necessitated a comeback. Still, he couldn’t stay away.

“As usual, I live on the edge, I try to defy the odds,” Leonard said. “I once again tried to show defiance by coming back at the tender age of 40 - although 40 is not an old man.”

But Leonard looked like an old man - not when he weighed in early in the morning, his body sleek and toned at 159 pounds, but when he actually stepped into the ring to face Camacho. And when he arrived at the postmatch news conference, a cut above his left eye taped shut, his face lined with exhaustion, he had to be helped to the lectern.

“This is indeed my last fight,” Leonard said. “One thing about me - it doesn’t take a scientist to understand if you’re stopped in a fight, that’s indicative of retirement.”

The Norris fight was indicative of retirement, too, but Leonard did not seem to learn his lesson that time. He talked at length this past week about why he had decided to make a comeback after so long - why he wanted to fight now that he is a grandfather, years and years removed from the last of his six championships. He talked about his drive, about his desire, about his inability to walk away from a sport that made him feel so very, well, alive. And he really did sound like he meant all of it. But the much-maligned Camacho had just as wise an answer to that question.

“Right now, he’s earning $3, $4 million,” Camacho said. “Nobody in this room, including me, could earn that much money in a day. So if he can pick up that much money - why not get your butt kicked?”

Speaking of money, one reporter at the postmatch news conference interrupted a long Leonard lovefest by asking a rather pointed question. After listening to Leonard, his doctor and his trainer all talk about the poor state of Leonard’s right calf - Leonard said he had to visit the hospital for the problem two weeks ago - the reporter asked Leonard how he could justify charging fight fans $35 a ticket when he knew, going in, that he was “damaged goods.”

Although some of Leonard’s fans in the room hissed, it was a more than reasonable query. “I gave 100 percent,” Leonard said. “I gave more than most people give when they are in shape. I don’t feel bad. I gave it all I had.”

But all Leonard has is not enough anymore, not even with the healthiest calf in America. He made that painfully obvious Saturday night, when he followed up the Norris debacle with yet another disaster.

Hopefully, this time, Leonard really will get the message. He sounded convinced on Saturday, especially when he said this: “Always trying to come back and beat the odds is one thing. But there comes a point in everyone’s life that you just have to accept that you don’t have it.”

Leonard’s had a hard time accepting that in the past. If he’s smart, though, Camacho has taught him his last lesson.