how did Leon Spinx ever get a title shot vs Cassius Clay with only 7 fights

Titan1 · Oct 10, 2018

Shame Leon couldn't keep it together. Under certain circumstances, he could have been champ for around a year.

Loudon · Oct 10, 2018

Dubblechin said: ↑

Butch Lewis got Leon Spinks a title shot.

Butch Lewis worked for Top Rank (Bob Arum's company) at the time. Lewis' dad was one of the original Cloverlay investors who ran Joe Frazier's career until around 1974. Over the years, Lewis became friends with Frazier.

In the mid 1970s, Lewis also became friends with Muhammad Ali. In fact, Lewis probably became closer to Ali than he was to Frazier. Lewis even kind of patterned his personality after Ali ... and at times seemed to be doing an impression of Ali when he did interviews.

After Lewis got a job with Bob Arum, and after meeting some German investors at one of Ali's fights Arum promoted, Lewis put together the Ali-Richard Dunn fight for Top Rank in Germany in 1976. Ali liked Lewis and thought there should be more black promoters instead of just Don King.

Lewis also was the person who became friends with the Spinks brothers and helped Top Rank sign them after the Olympics. Leon Spinks was already out of control when he was an amateur, but he was really feared back then by light heavys in the amateur ranks - like Tyson was when he was beating up all the heavyweights in 1986.

But Lewis had to convince Arum to sign Leon. Everyone wanted Ray Leonard and Howard Davis Jr., and while Leon Spinks was ferocious in the ring, he was kind of uncontrollable out of it. So Arum agreed to sign Leon if Lewis kept him contained.

Then, as ridiculous as it sounds, after the movie Rocky premiered, it seemed like everyone started looking for an Italian heavyweight.

For some reason, Don King and Bob Arum both latched on to Alfio Righetti, who was sort of a tall boxer (nothing like the character Rocky). Don King offered Righetti a title shot against Ali in early 1977, but the television networks rejected him because nobody knew who he was.

Then there was a push by everyone (Arum, King, the ratings bodies, etc.) it seemed to get Righetti ranked and try to sign him at the same time. They all seemed to think they could make some money off of him with the Rocky hysteria going on.

February was also a sweeps period for U.S. television stations. It's when networks determine the average number of people watching their programs so they know how much to charge advertisers. So CBS wanted to hold an Ali title fight during the February 1978 sweeps and charge high advertising fees.

Ali-Shavers, the previous September, drew an audience for NBC of 70 million viewers. (Not 7 million, 70 million.) But Ali's purse was only going to be around $3 million for the CBS show, so Ali wouldn't agree to face anyone too highly rated for that much. (He wanted $12 million for a fourth fight with Norton.)

Meanwhile, Leon had been a pro for about 10 months when he drew with Scott Ledoux. It looked like he was going to self destruct. So I won't say they wanted to cash in with Leon, but Arum was never a Leon guy. And Butch Lewis was talking about going out on his own and starting his own promotional company. So, before Lewis took Leon with him, Arum offered Righetti a fight with the recent gold medalist Spinks, and Arum and Lewis got Ali to agree to face the winner.

If Spinks beat Righetti and then managed to somehow win the title, Arum got to keep Spinks' promotional rights for a couple title defenses (maybe more, can't remember). If Spinks lost to Righetti, Righetti would be with Top Rank and Lewis could take Leon and away they'd go.

If he wasn't facing the top heavys, Ali tended to fight international heavyweights. It drew more global attention that way, even if the boxers themselves weren't all that good. So Ali wasn't thrilled with the prospect of facing Spinks. He'd have preferred Righetti.

Then Spinks won over Righetti, and Ali and Spinks was signed. But I recall Ali refusing to grant interviews at the time leading up to the fight. He was kind of embarrassed by it. CBS was p1ssed because they wanted big ratings, and while Leon was known all over the U.S., he was also known enough that nobody gave him a chance (since he wasn't even a pro for one year when the fight was signed). At least there would've been some mystery around Righetti.

It just seemed like a huge mess. Nobody was happy with Ali not talking. Ali wasn't happy with Spinks as his challenger. CBS wasn't happy that they didn't get their Ali-Righetti (Creed-Rocky) fight.

Meanwhile, Ali had recently sparred with the Colombian heavyweight Bernardo Mercado, who was managed by Oscar Bonavena's former manager, the pimp who owned the Mustang Ranch wh0rehouse in Nevada, John Conforte.

Don King and Conforte had become friends in the 1970s, and Conforte liked fighters (even though he had Bonavena shot for screwing his wife). Conforte wanted to get into the boxing business so much that he told King that King's boxers could live at the Mustang Ranch when training for fights in Nevada. And Conforte let them have s@x with as many prostitutes as they wanted. (That was yet another way King signed so many heavyweights that decade.)

In fact, Larry Holmes famously refused an offer to live at the Mustang Ranch while he trained for his first fight with Earnie Shavers in 1978, because he thought Don King was trying to drain him of all his energy by staying at "the ranch."

Anway, with Ali bummed about fighting Spinks, King got Ali to agree to defend against Bernardo Mercado (who, even though he was Colombian, was more in the Rocky mold) AFTER Ali beat Spinks. Ali liked the idea.

And the WBC agreed to let Mercado fight Ali before Norton got a shot, if the fight with Mercado took place before the fall of 1978.

Then, Spinks upset Ali, the greatest upset in heavyweight history. And all hell broke loose.

Forget finding an Italian. There was a new champ.

Arum and Lewis lined up a bunch of meetings for Spinks with advertisers, because they were going to turn him into a commercial pitchman. But Spinks got arrested about a week after the win over Ali with cocaine in his car. So all the meetings went away.

Arum also didn't have many heavyweights to speak of. He had Leon. But Don King had most of the top 10 heavyweights signed to promotional contracts - Ken Norton, Jimmy Young, Earnie Shavers, Larry Holmes, Ron Lyle.

Don King always sucked up to Herbert Muhammad, Ali's manager, but he didn't like Herbert because the manager wouldn't let Ali sign an exclusive promotional contract. So King saw this as his moment to grab control of the division. With Ali out, King was going to make Ali and his team come to Don King. King had all the contenders, if they wanted to make a deal.

That's when King went to the relatively new WBC president Jose Sulaiman, who he had also befriended, and got Sulaiman to change his mind an optional defense before the Norton fight. When Ali was champ, the WBC was going to let him fight Mercado, then Norton. (Because King could promote both.)

With Spinks the champ and Arum as his promoter, the WBC said Spinks had to fight Norton next or be stripped. Arum dumped Righetti and then started scanning the world looking for new contenders who King hadn't approached. He settled on South Africa.

Meanwhile, Herbert Muhammad realized Ali was screwed, because Ali didn't have a rematch clause against Spinks. Ali didn't want to get in line with all of King's guys.

And Leon kept appearing in the newspapers every week for ghetto St. Louis cr2p like getting drunk and getting in fights, getting arrested for not paying bills, disappearing and turning up in places he shouldn't be.

His brother, Michael, another gold medalist, took off the whole time Leon was champ to try to keep his brother alive and out of danger.

So Herbert and Arum agreed to stage an Ali-Spinks rematch, because Spinks wasn't going to hold it together much longer and Ali didn't want to fight his way back to a title shot ... and it was really the only fight they could make without involving King.

So, in 1978, the WBC stripped Spinks and named Norton their champ, Norton lost to Holmes and then Holmes agreed to defend his title against Alfio Righetti (who Arum had dumped and King picked up), but ABC rejected him as an opponent and Holmes fought Evangelista instead.

And Spinks defended against Ali and lost the title back to him, and Butch Lewis played an even bigger role in that fight because he was the only one who could get Leon to the Superdome to fight. (And Lewis lost Leon for a week or two during training camp.)

Bernardo Mercado, who was supposed to fight Ali in the summer of 1978, was apparently so bummed that he lost back-to-back fights to a green John Tate and got stopped by the unknown Mike Weaver. So Mercado's pimp manager was out of the game again, until a year or so later when Tate and Weaver became champs and Mercado became a name again.

After Spinks lost to Ali, Arum and Lewis separated and Lewis started his own promotional company with Michael Spinks. Arum kept Leon until Leon got stopped in 1979 by Arum's new South African heavyweight Gerrie Coetzee. Then Arum cut Leon loose.

That's what happened.
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Wow!

What a post this was.

I wish I’d seen this when you originally posted it 2 years ago.

I loved reading every word of it. It was a real pleasure.

Many thanks.

Nighttrain · Oct 10, 2018

mr. magoo said: ↑

He was pretty finished. A lot of people felt he lost both the Young fight and the third meeting with Norton. The Shavers win was razor thin.
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The Shavers win wasn’t razor though, the scoring for the fight was:

Referee: Johnny LoBianco 9-5

Judge: Eva Shain 9-6

Judge: Tony Castellano 9-6

Furthermore the scores were shown on the broadcast after each round due to the previous controversial decisions so there no surprise.

Jackomano · Oct 10, 2018

Saad54 said: ↑

He didn't beat any contenders.

I think some Italian guy he decisioned might have been ranked in the WBA top 10 - Alfredo Rigghitti?

He also drew with Scott Ledoux .

That was it.
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To be fair to Leon had a lot going for himself from 1974-1977. He was the National AAU champ from 1974-1976 and the Gold medalist in 1976. To top it off he went 6-0-1 in 1977 with a win over 6'4" 217 lbs Alfredo Righetti, who was a tall and awkward fighter that was 27-0. Ali fighting him in 1978 was a very easy fight to sell despite it turning into a cherrypick gone wrong for Ali.

Leon Spinks vs. Alfredo Righetti

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That said though he admittedly didn't beat any contenders and there were more deserving guys for a title shot at least Leon was ranked #9 in 1978 among the top 10.

When Michael Spinks got a shot against Holmes he certainly didn't earn a title shot and hadn't even fought as a heavyweight before. This was also the case with Roy Jones, who also never fought at heavyweight, but was granted a shot at a title.

GordonGarner65 · Oct 11, 2018

mr. magoo said: ↑

Leon Spinks was ranked around #5 when he fought Muhammad Ali which wasn't outrageous given the garbage landscape of the division in 1978 and the fact that Spinks was an Olympic gold medalist with a win over ranked contender Alfio Rhigetti.. Granted he was hardly the most Qualified challenger out there, but Ali had already faced the top man Norton three times along with young and shavers. Of course a rematch with one of those guys was more justified than fighting Spinks but it is what it is
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Just shows that the 70's wasn't as great as some think. Once Frazier had declined and Big George exposed by Young ( and Ali and Lyle).

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