Leon Spinks obituary
Leon Spinks, who has died aged 67 of cancer, was a classic rags-to-riches boxer who shocked the world in 1978 by becoming world heavyweight champion when he defeated the ageing champion Muhammad Ali in only his eighth fight as a professional. Sadly, Spinks was also a classic example of a star who frittered away a fortune on booze, drugs and partying.
It is perhaps apocryphal, but a story went into fighting legend that, in the week of their world title bout in Las Vegas, Ali was in the hotel elevator about to go for his regular early morning run. The door slid open in reception and ‘“the Greatest’” was confronted by a clearly well-lubricated Spinks returning from a night on the town with a woman on each arm.
In 1978 Ali was 36 and in the last stages of a fabulous career. He was already showing signs of the physical decline that afflicted his later years. Defying advice to retire, he had selected the novice Spinks as a low-risk title defence prior to a planned money-spinning fourth meeting with Ken Norton, against whom Ali had two wins and a defeat.
Almost certainly underestimating his opponent, Ali was ill-prepared for his title defence and lost by a split decision. Spinks celebrated in epic fashion, even by his standards, with one veteran sports writer observing: “He left Las Vegas surrounded by smiling thieves.”
When Spinks embarked on a huge binge, he was sometimes dressed in a full-length fur coat reputed to have cost $45,000. By the time of an agreed rematch with Ali, in New Orleans in 1978, he had acquired as his personal bodyguard Mr T, who would go on to star in The A-Team and Rocky III, while he partied hard and Ali prepared meticulously. “I had no control of myself out of the ring,” Spinks said. “All I cared about was going on to the next party. Who was I going to get high with? My life was cocaine, weed, cars and women. And I enjoyed it.”
At the New Orleans Superdome 63,350 people packed in for a fight that was broadcast to 80 countries across the world. This time Ali emerged as a clear winner on points, although Spinks would say many years later: “I think I won the second fight as well. But they wanted Ali [to win]. It ain’t what you know, but who you know.”
Born in St Louis, Illinois, Spinks was one of eight children brought up by his mother, Kay, in the city’s notorious Pruitt-Igoe housing project. The blocks, now demolished, were a byword for gang warfare and drug crime. Spinks would recall how his father, before abandoning his young family, had beaten him as a boy and taunted him by saying: “You’ll never be nothing.”
Those words would inspire Spinks in his quest for success as a boxer. He and his younger brother Michael, who would also go on to become a world heavyweight champion, beating Larry Holmes in 1985, learned to box at the nearby DeSoto recreation centre. Both enjoyed prodigious success in the amateur sport, culminating with gold medals for the US at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal.
Leon, who had dropped out of school to join the marines, was threetimes marines champion and won a bronze medal in the World Championship of 1974, plus a silver the following year in the Pan American Games in Mexico before his Olympic triumph as a light heavyweight, while Michael won the middleweight title.
Spinks’s gap-toothed smile, which later became known across the world, came about during his army service. “I got headbutted while sparring in the marines, one or two got loose and they pulled them out,” he said.
After his bouts with Ali, for which he is believed to have earned less than $300,000 from the first fight and $3.5m for the rematch, he was never destined to reach such heights again. He unsuccessfully challenged Holmes for the WBC title in 1981, when he was stopped in three rounds, and fought Dwight Muhammad Qawi for the WBA cruiserweight crown in 1986, when Qawi won in the sixth.
Spinks quit in 1995, aged 42. In contrast to his brother, who retired on a $13.5m pay cheque when losing his title to Mike Tyson in 1988, Leon became a peripheral figure earning relatively insignificant sums. His career record reveals 26 wins, 17 losses and three draws.
Spinks often denied that he blew his money, claiming: “That’s bullshit. That’s what people think. My lawyers stole it from me … I was stupid and gave them power of attorney.” But by the late 90s he was living in a homeless shelter in East St Louis. When I saw him a number of years ago, at the annual Hall of Fame celebrations, he had become a glassy-eyed, slurring figure. Medical tests showed he had suffered brain damage.
Spinks was married three times and divorced twice. He found some order in a chaotic lifestyle only when he connected with Brenda Glur, who became his third wife. They met when Leon was barely surviving, living in Brandon, Missouri, and Brenda was working as a wardrobe dresser on a Rockettes tour there. They married in 2011 and moved to Las Vegas, where Spinks made money selling autographs and photos to fans.
He is survived by Brenda and by two sons, Cory and Darrell, from an early relationship with Zadie Mae Calvin, with whom he grew up in St Louis. A third son with Zadie Mae, Leon Jr, was killed in a shooting in 1990. Both Cory and Darrell became boxers, with Cory holding world titles at welterweight and junior middleweight. His grandson Leon Spinks III was also a professional fighter.
• Leon Spinks, boxer, born 11 July 1953; died 6 February 2021