spinks brothers article

It was time for him to enter the ring in New Orleans for his rematch with Ali, but Leon had disappeared, and neither his camp nor his bodyguard—Mr. T., the future Clubber Lang—could find him. He was finally located in a hotel room, drunk.

As Ali stood in his corner calmly waiting for the fight to begin, Leon reached for his brother and held him in a tight, lingering embrace. He might have been voicing some version of the old spiritual’s lament: Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen. But Michael knew.

Somehow Leon managed to fight on relatively even terms with Ali for five rounds before Ali took command. It wasn’t much of a fight. Ali danced for the first time in years, but he landed mostly one- and two-punch combinations while holding Leon ceaselessly over 15 rounds and winning a lopsided decision. Leon went back out partying and kept the party going for years, though his career quickly became a sideshow. He lost about as often as he won, drank up his paydays in single sittings, and generally lived the life of a wild, not terribly bright dude. Years later, training Leon for one last shot at remaking his career, Emanuel Steward went looking for the fighter and found him in the usual place—a hotel—and in the usual state—drunk, naked, and with a woman. “Coach, it ain’t like it look,” he said.
Leon wound up broke.

Where Leon was madcap, Michael was reserved and enigmatic, only slightly off-kilter and in none of the ways that make headlines. “Michael always seemed so logical compared to Leon,” promoter Bob Arum said. “It seemed to me that Michael had some sense. Leon never had any sense.” Michael turned out to be a better fighter than his older brother, too, largely because of his personal stability and discipline. But in 1983, his life was upended when his common-law wife, the mother of his two-year old daughter, was killed in a car accident weeks before he was to fight Dwight Muhammad Qawi to unify the light heavyweight title. Just as he was preparing to enter the ring, someone brought the little girl into Michael’s dressing room. She promptly asked him where her mother was. Michael almost went to pieces, but he went out and beat Qawi.

Michael had a curious ability to inspire disdain in his opponents, perhaps because of his unusual style, if it was a style. He’d start out orthodox, but in the heat of battle punches would start flying in from all angles. In 1985, when Michael beat Holmes — then 48-0 and one win away from equaling Rocky Marciano’s perfect record — Holmes complained about the decision. The following year, Holmes had a legitimate gripe about their rematch, which Michael also won by decision: most observers thought Holmes deserved the nod. Even in 1987, when Michael knocked out the much bigger Gerry ****ey, whom he feared, he couldn’t seem to convince his opponent. The usually gracious ****ey said that Michael didn’t belong in the same ring with him.

Where Leon endured a sustained descent, Michael’s downfall was mercifully brief: in June 1988, he faced off against Mike Tyson in the bout that would unify (for a few years at least) the heavyweight title. Tyson was at his peak, a terrifying force combining speed and power. Emanuel Steward told how before the Tyson fight, Michael was afraid to leave his dressing room. He entered the Atlantic City ring, as the authors put it, wearing “the look of a rabbit that had just spotted a hunter’s rifle.” Michael’s trainer, Eddie Futch, wanted him to box Tyson, to stay away for four or five rounds—easier said than done in those days. “Take him out in deep water and then we can drown him,” he said. Tyson never gave them a chance, annihilating Spinks in 91 seconds. It was Michael’s only loss as a professional and his last fight.
Michael lives on a generous spread outside Wilmington, Delaware, and mostly keeps a low profile.

(by John Florio and Ouisie Shapiro)