GorDoom
03-23-2006, 06:54 PM
Leon Spinks: Now There's a Man
By Teri Berg from Max Boxing
How the mighty fall.
That’s the way life seems to have turned out for Leon Spinks.
“Neon Leon,” one-time Ali killer and jet-setting heavyweight champ, is now living in Where-Dat, Nebraska, cleaning locker rooms and mopping floors at the YMCA, and unloading trucks at the local McDonald’s in exchange for half-priced Big Macs.
If that image is depressing to contemplate, hold that thought – because it gets worse.
You’d like to think Spinks had the usual run of good years, then just stuck around too long. But Spinks reached his peak in one year and eight months – that is, his first eight professional fights, the last of which was his historic 15-round upset of Muhammad Ali. But Spinks didn’t let his loss to Ali in their rematch discourage him; he kept boxing until 1995. Nearly 17 more years. And not doing it very well, as his final record amounted to 26 wins, 17 losses and 3 draws.
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Those losses, and even the wins, cost Spinks more than he made. And they continue to exact payment.
Though he wouldn’t tell a Lincoln Journal Star reporter last April what happened to the nearly $5 million in winnings he earned in the 1970s, Spinks has insisted ad nauseum that he didn’t see a penny of his $3.25 million purse from Ali-Spinks 2, “The Battle of New Orleans.” Stolen by a double-crossing, low-down dog of a Detroit lawyer. Go figure.
Further, the paltry sums the Gap-Toothed One fought for throughout the 1980s and ‘90s worsened his financial headaches. How to square his own profligate spending habits as well as those of his parasitic hangers-on with fight purses as low as $2,500 (the amount he pocketed for his last fight, an eight-round loss to the soft-bellied Fred Houpe, who hadn’t fought for 16 years)? The mid-career Spinks was so flaky that in 1984, he couldn’t even keep a job making $1,500 per week at Mike Ditka’s restaurant in Chicago doing what he has always done best – meet-n-greet regular folks. The nightspot, popular during the reign of Da Bears, found the former champ too unreliable and dismissed him.
Upon Spinks’ retirement from boxing, there was – as one might expect – no money left.
For most professional athletes – particularly boxers, who get too few opportunities to make enough money to guard against devastating injury and to live comfortably into retirement – it’s usually all about the Benjamins. But, after 25 years of witnessing his (few) ups and (cringe-inducingly low) downs, I think it’s safe to say that Leon Spinks has never been so inclined.
All too soon “Inside Edition” aired a report of a destitute and homeless Spinks, scraping by with odd jobs at minimum wage. The only shred of his former life that remained was his heavy drinking.
Over the course of a tumultuous life, Spinks, who turns 53 this year, has lost a lot. Some of those things most folks never have a shot at – the Olympic gold medal in 1976, the heavyweight title 18 short months later, the vacations around the world with bodyguard Mr. T standing by. But Spinks has also lost things many of us take for granted.
Spinks ended his ring work seeming no more than a colossal waste of potential. He lost a chance for a respectable career and a fortune in winnings. (Promoter Butch Lewis, who worked with Spinks through the champ’s rematch with Ali, later said, “I know I could’ve made Leon upwards of $50 million if he had disciplined himself and done the right things for four or five years.” After going their separate ways, Lewis continued to handle Leon’s brother, Michael, who retired at age 30 with $30 million in winnings.)
Spinks also forfeited two wives, a close relationship with his sons and any chance of a stable family home. (His first son, Leon Calvin, a once-promising light heavyweight, was killed in 1990 in what was thought to be a gang-related shooting. Darrell Calvin Spinks boxed professionally for five years until retiring in 2000 at the age of 27. The youngest Spinks son, Cory, was the undisputed welterweight champ before losing the title to Zab Judah last year. Leon’s adopted son – his grandson, Leon Spinks Jr., who was left fatherless as a two-year-old upon the death of Leon Calvin – is, at 17, a Golden Gloves champ.)
Now, it seems, out in the middle of Nowhereville, Nebraska, Leon Spinks is also losing his mind.
He’s slurred his words for years and had neurological testing done as long ago as 1996, though observers usually chalked up Spinks’ problems speaking to his St. Louis dialect and the wide-open front door of his mouth. But even when Spinks put in his dental bridge, his words weren’t exactly traveling as the crow flies; rather, they moseyed here and there on their way to downright incomprehensibility. In a Dec. 2005 story, Stan Grossfeld of the Boston Globe reported that Spinks’ famous missing teeth aren’t the whole story – the one-time “People’s Champ” is suffering the ill effects of boxing-induced dementia.
What is some consolation – definitely for him, but hopefully for us as well – is that while Spinks is bereft of the spotlight and glamour and riches that were once his, has in fact been on the slippery slope of celebrity downfall for 20-something years, and is now lapsing into irreversible mental decline, he’s not unhappy. Not unhappy living in Columbus, Nebraska, population 20,881, an 87-mile, snoozefest of a drive west of Omaha, the nearest decent-sized city, and a solid nine hours from where he grew up in East St. Louis. Not bothered about pushing a janitor’s cart and swabbing out toilets part-time at the Columbus Family Y. Not troubled to spend his considerable spare time in town mastering the arts of cadging drinks and playing video games.
In fact, there are plenty of things to appreciate about where he’s at right now. No one much bothers him in Columbus – some folks don’t even know who he is. Once they find out, they’re thrilled to meet him. Wow! A former heavyweight champion! He has no pretensions, and they have no expectations other than that he act “like an everyday human being,” as one local described him.
Spinks has done volunteer work for a Columbus after-school program, a church kitchen for the homeless and the local Special Olympics, and his YMCA job lets him fart around with and try to talk some sense into local kids – one of the things he most enjoys.
Most importantly, Spinks has found a home in Columbus with a woman he’s been seeing there for nearly five years. She doubles as his business manager and daily chauffeur, which are not the quixotic undertakings they may seem. Spinks still works several autograph shows per year, making a few thousand dollars a pop. And he’s a standard bearer for induction weekend every summer at Canastota – and a popular one (though not an enshrined one). Also, his son Cory’s success has shined the spotlight back on Spinks, and added to the small reserve of celebrity he and his toothless grin will no doubt always have.
“I’m happy ‘bout life,” he told the Boston Globe. “[I’m] still trying. I ain’t giving up on life.”
Author Davis Miller once quoted Muhammad Ali as saying, “I know why this happened. God is showing me, and showing you, that I’m just a man, just like everybody else.”
Ali was at a point in his life then when his Parkinson’s had all but stopped whatever public life this very public man had enjoyed.
But, despite his heart-wrenching protestations, Ali was no mere mortal. Rather, like a minor Hindu deity, he was simply between stages of his godhood.
But Leon Spinks? He’s well acquainted with longing and grief. Suffering more bad luck than good. Beholden to those high and low to make his way in the world. Held in contempt by the learned, but ever humble and genuine among das volk. Wanting (and often found wanting), but nonetheless cheerful. Now there’s a man: Feet of clay, and the quintessence of dust.
And God has never tired of showing him.
By Teri Berg from Max Boxing
How the mighty fall.
That’s the way life seems to have turned out for Leon Spinks.
“Neon Leon,” one-time Ali killer and jet-setting heavyweight champ, is now living in Where-Dat, Nebraska, cleaning locker rooms and mopping floors at the YMCA, and unloading trucks at the local McDonald’s in exchange for half-priced Big Macs.
If that image is depressing to contemplate, hold that thought – because it gets worse.
You’d like to think Spinks had the usual run of good years, then just stuck around too long. But Spinks reached his peak in one year and eight months – that is, his first eight professional fights, the last of which was his historic 15-round upset of Muhammad Ali. But Spinks didn’t let his loss to Ali in their rematch discourage him; he kept boxing until 1995. Nearly 17 more years. And not doing it very well, as his final record amounted to 26 wins, 17 losses and 3 draws.
See More MaxTV Videos
It's good to be a member
Those losses, and even the wins, cost Spinks more than he made. And they continue to exact payment.
Though he wouldn’t tell a Lincoln Journal Star reporter last April what happened to the nearly $5 million in winnings he earned in the 1970s, Spinks has insisted ad nauseum that he didn’t see a penny of his $3.25 million purse from Ali-Spinks 2, “The Battle of New Orleans.” Stolen by a double-crossing, low-down dog of a Detroit lawyer. Go figure.
Further, the paltry sums the Gap-Toothed One fought for throughout the 1980s and ‘90s worsened his financial headaches. How to square his own profligate spending habits as well as those of his parasitic hangers-on with fight purses as low as $2,500 (the amount he pocketed for his last fight, an eight-round loss to the soft-bellied Fred Houpe, who hadn’t fought for 16 years)? The mid-career Spinks was so flaky that in 1984, he couldn’t even keep a job making $1,500 per week at Mike Ditka’s restaurant in Chicago doing what he has always done best – meet-n-greet regular folks. The nightspot, popular during the reign of Da Bears, found the former champ too unreliable and dismissed him.
Upon Spinks’ retirement from boxing, there was – as one might expect – no money left.
For most professional athletes – particularly boxers, who get too few opportunities to make enough money to guard against devastating injury and to live comfortably into retirement – it’s usually all about the Benjamins. But, after 25 years of witnessing his (few) ups and (cringe-inducingly low) downs, I think it’s safe to say that Leon Spinks has never been so inclined.
All too soon “Inside Edition” aired a report of a destitute and homeless Spinks, scraping by with odd jobs at minimum wage. The only shred of his former life that remained was his heavy drinking.
Over the course of a tumultuous life, Spinks, who turns 53 this year, has lost a lot. Some of those things most folks never have a shot at – the Olympic gold medal in 1976, the heavyweight title 18 short months later, the vacations around the world with bodyguard Mr. T standing by. But Spinks has also lost things many of us take for granted.
Spinks ended his ring work seeming no more than a colossal waste of potential. He lost a chance for a respectable career and a fortune in winnings. (Promoter Butch Lewis, who worked with Spinks through the champ’s rematch with Ali, later said, “I know I could’ve made Leon upwards of $50 million if he had disciplined himself and done the right things for four or five years.” After going their separate ways, Lewis continued to handle Leon’s brother, Michael, who retired at age 30 with $30 million in winnings.)
Spinks also forfeited two wives, a close relationship with his sons and any chance of a stable family home. (His first son, Leon Calvin, a once-promising light heavyweight, was killed in 1990 in what was thought to be a gang-related shooting. Darrell Calvin Spinks boxed professionally for five years until retiring in 2000 at the age of 27. The youngest Spinks son, Cory, was the undisputed welterweight champ before losing the title to Zab Judah last year. Leon’s adopted son – his grandson, Leon Spinks Jr., who was left fatherless as a two-year-old upon the death of Leon Calvin – is, at 17, a Golden Gloves champ.)
Now, it seems, out in the middle of Nowhereville, Nebraska, Leon Spinks is also losing his mind.
He’s slurred his words for years and had neurological testing done as long ago as 1996, though observers usually chalked up Spinks’ problems speaking to his St. Louis dialect and the wide-open front door of his mouth. But even when Spinks put in his dental bridge, his words weren’t exactly traveling as the crow flies; rather, they moseyed here and there on their way to downright incomprehensibility. In a Dec. 2005 story, Stan Grossfeld of the Boston Globe reported that Spinks’ famous missing teeth aren’t the whole story – the one-time “People’s Champ” is suffering the ill effects of boxing-induced dementia.
What is some consolation – definitely for him, but hopefully for us as well – is that while Spinks is bereft of the spotlight and glamour and riches that were once his, has in fact been on the slippery slope of celebrity downfall for 20-something years, and is now lapsing into irreversible mental decline, he’s not unhappy. Not unhappy living in Columbus, Nebraska, population 20,881, an 87-mile, snoozefest of a drive west of Omaha, the nearest decent-sized city, and a solid nine hours from where he grew up in East St. Louis. Not bothered about pushing a janitor’s cart and swabbing out toilets part-time at the Columbus Family Y. Not troubled to spend his considerable spare time in town mastering the arts of cadging drinks and playing video games.
In fact, there are plenty of things to appreciate about where he’s at right now. No one much bothers him in Columbus – some folks don’t even know who he is. Once they find out, they’re thrilled to meet him. Wow! A former heavyweight champion! He has no pretensions, and they have no expectations other than that he act “like an everyday human being,” as one local described him.
Spinks has done volunteer work for a Columbus after-school program, a church kitchen for the homeless and the local Special Olympics, and his YMCA job lets him fart around with and try to talk some sense into local kids – one of the things he most enjoys.
Most importantly, Spinks has found a home in Columbus with a woman he’s been seeing there for nearly five years. She doubles as his business manager and daily chauffeur, which are not the quixotic undertakings they may seem. Spinks still works several autograph shows per year, making a few thousand dollars a pop. And he’s a standard bearer for induction weekend every summer at Canastota – and a popular one (though not an enshrined one). Also, his son Cory’s success has shined the spotlight back on Spinks, and added to the small reserve of celebrity he and his toothless grin will no doubt always have.
“I’m happy ‘bout life,” he told the Boston Globe. “[I’m] still trying. I ain’t giving up on life.”
Author Davis Miller once quoted Muhammad Ali as saying, “I know why this happened. God is showing me, and showing you, that I’m just a man, just like everybody else.”
Ali was at a point in his life then when his Parkinson’s had all but stopped whatever public life this very public man had enjoyed.
But, despite his heart-wrenching protestations, Ali was no mere mortal. Rather, like a minor Hindu deity, he was simply between stages of his godhood.
But Leon Spinks? He’s well acquainted with longing and grief. Suffering more bad luck than good. Beholden to those high and low to make his way in the world. Held in contempt by the learned, but ever humble and genuine among das volk. Wanting (and often found wanting), but nonetheless cheerful. Now there’s a man: Feet of clay, and the quintessence of dust.
And God has never tired of showing him.