the abbreviated reign of “neon” leon spinks

OOPS 178
Davies of BBC Sport, who interviewed Spinks in 2004. “And on that count
Spinks certainly didn’t disappoint.”
Leon’s Biggest Crash
“Neon Leon” was born shortly thereafter, and his victory party
lasted until the rematch. The new champ began making news from the
moment of his ascension. Take, for example, one remarkable three-day
stretch just a month after winning the title. In a single lost weekend in
mid-March 1978, the new champion was stripped of his title by the World
Boxing Council (for ignoring his contractual obligation to fight Ken Norton
and opting instead for a lucrative rematch with Ali), sued by his Philadelphia
landlord for failing to pay two months’ rent, and arrested for
driving without a license down a one-way street. It was one of fi ve traffi c
arrests within four months of winning the title—this from a man who, in
an elegant and rare quintuple negative, thus explained why he’d waited
until he was twenty-four to get his driver’s license: “I didn’t see no point
in getting no driver’s license when I couldn’t afford no car.”
His traffic mishaps paled, though, compared to his most disastrous
head-on collision. That came during the Ali rematch. Old habits die hard,
and Spinks was so caught up in living the life of the champ that he never
quite got around to preparing for the fast-approaching second fi ght, which
was scheduled to be televised live from the Superdome in New Orleans.
Spinks may have been the only one who wasn’t taking the rematch
seriously. It was preceded by the kind of public acclaim normally reserved
for papal visits. “Crowds lined the streets of the Crescent City for parades,
stormed practice facilities during warm-ups and bought tens of thousands
of tickets, filling the Superdome from the floor to the rafters,” wrote
Times- Picayune sportswriter Amalie Benjamin in a 2003 story about the
25th anniversary of the rematch. “The city was bursting at the seams in
the days leading up to [the] fi ght.”
Ali understood that nothing less than his boxing legacy was at stake
in the rematch and trained hard. Spinks, on the other hand, approached