If Gentleman Jim was dignified, Ali was Pretty, Michael Spinks was Handsome, Sonny Liston was intimidating, then surely “Neon” Leon Spinks was ugly. Perhaps it’s an unfair description of the former world champion, but the gaping mouth of a man who’s teeth seemed to have run away will never be anything but worryingly ugly.
Born in Missouri, St Louis on 11th July 1953 (3 years and 2 days before his younger brother Michael) Leon would be an outstanding amateur boxer and compete in one of the most famous American boxing teams in history. The 1976 team that took 5 gold medals and included the brilliant Sugar Ray Leonard as well as the Spinks brothers would be one of the last great US teams. What is usually not said is just how good of an amateur Leon really was, from his 185 fights he won an amazing 178 and scored 133 KO’s in them. He would win the US championship 3 times, a Bronze at the World champion, a silver at the Pan-Am games and of course the Gold at the Olympics.
As a professional he would make his debut in January of 1977 around 3 months before his brothers debut pro-fight, just 7 fights later over a space of 13 months and he would see himself facing Muhammed Ali. Spinks having a record of 6-0-1 was seen as a safe tune up to a fourth fight between Ali and Norton in what would have been a mandatory WBC title defence. In what would turn out to be one of the biggest upsets in sporting history Leon would become world heavyweight champion in February of 1978 winning a split decision over Ali to take the WBC and WBA belts. Ali had come into the bout badly prepared and had fought poorly against a relatively inspired Leon who would show he had potential to go a long away historically if he could replicate this sort of a performance regularly.
As Leon would rather face a rematch with Ali rather than the WBC’s mandatory challenger Ken Norton, the WBC stripped Spinks and effectively handed the title over to Norton. It seemed after this Spinks’ life and career went into a relative free fall at the hands of his partying life style and love of alcohol. The rematch with Ali saw a more in shape Ali taking on a Leon Spinks that looked as though he had reached the top and was on his way down with little else to prove, he had done, he’d been the world heavyweight champion. Spinks would lose the WBA belt and never go onto to hold a major belt again.
After the two fights with Ali he would face Gerrie Coetzee who would stop Leon in the first round, giving Leon his first stoppage loss. In 3 fights Leon had gone from 7-0-1 undisputed world champion to 7-2-1. A 5th round KO over Alfredo Evangelista looked like Spinks had managed to get his life under control and sort out the partying-training trade off, but sadly it wasn’t to be a draw in his next fight before 2 rather simple wins that had some how got him a chance at Holmes for the WBC title. Larry Holmes was 37-0 and looking like he was in charge of the heavyweights of the day and in knocking out Spinks in the 3rd round he proved that Spinks didn’t deserve to have a chance to take back a crown he once held.
He would win the lightly regarded NABF Cruiserweight title two fights later before being stopped again by Carlos De Leon and then spent almost 2 years out of the ring. In fact after he came back he would win only 14 of his next 28 contests, mostly against journeymen fighters. The most noteworthy opponent was Dwight Muhammad Qawi who stopped Leon in round 6 of a WBA title defence at Cruiserweight. He would go 1-7-1 in his next 9 fights but financial problems kept him in the ring, despite being paid $5million for the Ali rematch (as opposed to the $1.5million offered for the Norton fight) he had spent it all and more. In fact he would be declared bankrupt and many could see he wasn’t in the ring any more to win world titles, just merely earn a living.
A come back in the 1990’s saw him start by stringing together 5 straight wins, something he’d only ever done once, his first 5 fights. Though these were all against nothing fighters, actually the most interesting fact from this late comeback was the fight with John Carlo in which Leon was stopped in the first round. Carlo was a debutant and Spinks became the only former world heavyweight champion to be KO’d by a debutant in the fight round,
Although the younger of the Spinks brothers it often seemed like Michael was the one who was the most mature keeping an eye out early in his career to help Leon through some of the early problems. Though in later life Leon became homeless and was working in a YMCA as cleaner the problem of drink drugs and a lack of training hurt Leon more than anything else. He was the world champion but no one will remember him in the anything other than another one of the pretenders to the world heavy weights.
His son Cory would become the new generation in boxing and go on to take titles at Welterweight and Light Middleweight himself. Who became the third family member to win a world title after Leon and Michael ho became the first heavyweight champions to have been brothers, an act Wladimir and Vitali would also do.
His record of 26(14)-17-3 shows he won around 56% of his fights, the worst of any linear heavyweight in history. So maybe this more than anything else should sum up Leon, talented, but ultimately a fighter unable to harness all his talent for long, he was lucky to get his chance and lucky his opponent was unprepared. His shining day in the sunlight would come in his 8th fight, and never return.
