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Sporting News, The, March 11, 2005 by Dave Kindred

For a dead guy, Ray Charles is all over the news. There's the movie Ray, in which actor Jamie Foxx channels the great singer so persuasively that not even Clint Eastwood and Leonardo DiCaprio could beat Foxx at the Oscars. There also are the eight Grammys that Charles won for music done in the last year of his life.

Not that the Ray Charles story needs another footnote, but do you remember his role in one of the most famous sports events of the last quarter-century?

It was November 25, 1980.

The Louisiana Superdome.

Sugar Ray Leonard fighting Roberto Duran.

Leonard, America's sweetheart since winning a gold medal in the 1976 Olympics, had lost his welterweight championship to the legendary Panamanian five months earlier. He lost by engaging Duran in a contest of power rather than of the finesse that had made Leonard so effective and appealing.

Duran, known as "Hands of Stone," Manos de Piedra, brought a 72-1 record to New Orleans. His reputation for ferocity was such that columnist Dave Anderson of The New York Times asked heavyweight champion Joe Frazier if Duran reminded him of anyone. A leading question, for Anderson thought Duran's frightening assaults were of a kind with Frazier's. But Frazier surprised Anderson.

Yes, Duran reminded him of someone.

"Charles Manson," Frazier said.

This time, then, Leonard decided to fight his own style, not Duran's. And in a subtle, ironic announcement of that decision, Leonard came into the ring wearing gear unlike any he had ever used. Rummaging in a locker a month before, he found a pair of old, black boxing shoes, made in Mexico, rising barely over the ankle, gloriously retro. And he said, "These are for Duran."

He'd always loved flash. Red tassels had danced from the top of calf-high white shoes. He'd entered the ring to the disco beat of his own theme song, "Hey, Hey, Sugar Ray." Not this time. Silence this time, and all black. The shoes, black socks, black trunks, a black robe with one word in gold on the back: LEONARD. No sugar in Sugar Ray this night.

"How do I look?" he asked his attorney, Mike Trainer.

The attorney smiled. "You look like a mix of the Grim Reaper and an assassin."

And so Cicero Leonard's son came from his dressing room to the ring. Cicero Leonard, once a fighter, who said he had been a U.S. Navy champion at 156 pounds with a 46-1 record. Who said he learned to fight by listening to Joe Louis on the radio and studying pictures of Joe Louis in the newspaper. Cicero Leonard, who became the father of a son on May 17, 1956.

Who had big dreams for his last-born son.

And named him Ray Charles Leonard.

For Ray Robinson, the fighter.

And for Ray Charles.

On this night in New Orleans 24 years later, Sugar Ray Leonard came into the ring expecting to fall under the malevolent gaze of Roberto Duran. What he did not expect was to share the ring with Ray Charles.

"No, no, we had no idea," says Angelo Dundee, then Leonard's manager. "We were getting ready for the fight of Ray's life. The national anthem, we had no idea."

The national anthem, forget it. Ray Charles did better than that. He sang "America the Beautiful." The longer he sang it, the more powerfully he sang it, the happier Ray Charles Leonard became. Bouncing on his toes. Shaking his shoulders. Tapping his gloves together as Ray Charles sang. He was euphoria itself, all in black.

"Duran had no chance from that moment on," says sportswriter Tom Callahan. "As Charles went around a second time on the song, Duran's cornerman, Freddie Brown, was about to die. Of all the amazing things I've seen in sports, this wasn't Secretariat coming down the stretch, but it's one of 'em."

Dundee still laughs. "Oh, my, when Ray Charles started singing, we were in like Flynn."

And when Ray Charles stopped singing, here's what happened.

Ray Charles Leonard hugged and kissed him.

Duran might as well have cut off his gloves right then, for all the voodoo karma in New Orleans had chosen sides.

Leonard made a fool of Duran that night, moving quickly, in and out, side to side, a matador playing with a bull. In the seventh round, Leonard did 3 minutes of taunting, offering his wide-eyed face as a stationary target, throwing a jab while windmilling his right arm, a hip shimmy here, an Ali shuffle there.

Not Duran's idea of boxing. He wanted dirty war, brawling in close quarters, and Leonard denied him that. So with 16 seconds left in the eighth round, Duran quit. Walked away from Leonard. Told the referee, "No mas." No more.

The winner and new welterweight champion, Sugar Ray Leonard.

With a hand from Ray Charles.