the abbreviated reign of “neon” leon spinks

THINK LONG TERM 177
“Leon Spinks had it all,” recalled fabled sports columnist Jim Mur-
ray in 1987. “He was strong, quick, muscular, charismatic and he loved to
fight.” But, Murray added, Spinks “also loved to party. He thought he was
strong enough to drink all night and fight all [day]. He almost could.”
That wasn’t just hyperbole. Spinks apparently adhered to his lessthan-steely
training discipline even as he stood on the threshold of fame.
While Spinks was training for the first Ali fight, Lewis assigned an associate
to sleep on a cot outside the door to Spinks’s bedroom to keep the
boxer out of trouble. Spinks got out anyway, climbing through his window
and turning up later in a nearby tavern, where his handlers found
him shooting pool. In an interview with Associated Press boxing writer
Tim Dahlberg in 2004, Gene Kilroy, an Ali confidant, recalled an earlymorning
encounter with Spinks at a Las Vegas hotel not long before the
two men were scheduled to climb into the ring for the first time. Kilroy
and Ali were getting off a hotel elevator at 4:30 a.m. so Ali could go running
at a nearby golf course. The elevator doors opened, and there stood
Spinks, apparently drunk and with a woman on each arm.
“Champ! How’s it going?” Kilroy recalled Spinks slurring.
Rather than working out, Ali headed straight for the hotel coffee
shop. Kilroy recalled Ali’s reaction: “I’m an Olympic champion, a twotime
heavyweight champion, and I have to go through this for him?”
Ali paid dearly for that misjudgment. He entered the Las Vegas
ring as an overwhelming favorite and with a twenty-seven-pound weight
advantage over the Olympic light heavyweight gold medalist, and his
strategy was to wear down the inexperienced Spinks in the early rounds.
“But he never got tired,” Ali told reporters in a postfight news conference.
“He kept getting stronger.” Spinks was aggressive throughout the fi ght,
clearly in command through the first six rounds. Ali began to tire. Judges
awarded Ali most of the middle rounds, but Spinks rallied in the fi nal
rounds and won on a split decision. Even Ali agreed that Spinks had won
the fi ght.
“It was a win that deserved to be celebrated in style,” wrote Sean