They Pack a Slicker Punch : Unusual Promotion for Leonard-Lalonde May Outshine Bout

LAS VEGAS —  A dozen years ago in the Washington area, just when lawyer Mike Trainer was becoming bored handling divorce and drunk-driving cases, his phone rang.

It was Janks Morton on the line, a boxing trainer and a softball teammate of Trainer’s.

“Mike didn’t know a thing about boxing then, and the only reason he knew who Sugar Ray Leonard was because the three of us played on the same softball team,” Morton said Sunday.

Months before, Leonard had won the light-welterweight gold medal at the Montreal Olympics, but had announced he wouldn’t turn pro.

“Ray had changed his mind about turning pro,” Morton said.

“He was going to the University of Maryland, but his parents had become ill. He asked me if there was a way he could box as a pro but be completely his own man, in charge of his career.

“I told him Trainer was an honest guy, that we should talk to him.”

Leonard and Morton called on Trainer. Leonard turned pro. No contract was signed. And so Leonard and Trainer, together, walked into a new world.

Twelve years and $70 million later, in what has become one of boxing’s most enduring unions, there is still no contract binding Leonard and Trainer. And tonight, in one of the most unusual promotions in the modern history of boxing, Leonard and Trainer again march into unexplored territory.

It’s Leonard-Lalonde.

When it was announced in August that Leonard, ending 19 months of inactivity, and Donny (the Golden Boy) Lalonde would meet for Lalonde’s World Boxing Council light-heavyweight championship and the new WBC super-middleweight championship, the giggling began immediately.

The giggling stopped a couple of weeks ago.

First, Leonard’s enormous pulling power with the sports viewing public was underestimated. He’s obviously still seen as a legendary performer, and he can still fight--at least, he still could 19 months ago, when he upset Marvin Hagler here.

But in addition to Leonard’s charisma, this show is one of the slickest, most professional, most creative and most successful boxing promotions in years, for the following reason:

Trainer, Caesars Palace and the pay-per-view cable television packager, TitanSports, have taken a light-heavyweight with marginal credentials, Lalonde, and somehow imbued him with more ability than is really there. As a result, they have passed off tonight’s Las Vegas show as a world-class event.

Believe it. This is not Leonard-Hagler. But it seems as if it is.

In the home stretch, Team Trainer/Caesars Palace/Ti Proposition 94 would allow judges to teach part-time at public universities--as they may now tanSports seems to have pulled off a winner.

Leonard’s public workouts in the Caesars Palace Pavilion this week have drawn crowds of 500-plus.

At Las Vegas’ last boxing blockbuster, Leonard-Hagler on April 15, 1987, more than 1,100 media credentials were issued. Leonard-Lalonde has drawn 750 media representatives from 15 countries.

Caesars charged $700 for ringside seats for Leonard-Hagler. For tonight’s bout, the hotel has scaled its 15,200 seats from $1,000 ringside to $200 for the last rows of the bleachers.

Further, they’ve pulled this off without rival promoters Bob Arum or Don King, who’ve been running these shows for the last 20 years.

When Trainer, who is the promoter, and Leonard settled on Lalonde as an opponent, they chose a guy who represented a minimum risk to Leonard in the ring. But also, the way Trainer and Leonard sized up Lalonde, here was someone they could build a promotional home run around.

How slick is it?

It’s so slick, that if you knock Lalonde as an opponent for Leonard this week, it’s almost perceived as if you’re endorsing child abuse.

Lalonde people here wear black jackets with a “No Excuse for Child Abuse” logo on the back. Much is made of his campaign to help not only abused children but also child abusers.

Lalonde, a Canadian and a one-time victim of child abuse, is the official spokesman for the U.S. government’s campaign against child abuse. He also represents Canadian child-abuse prevention organizations such as Covenant House in Toronto, and New Faces in Winnipeg.

Get the picture?

Lalonde was perfect.

These people are pros, and we’re not talking about the boxers.

The cast:

--Trainer, who first somehow got a reported $9 million from Caesars Palace (though the hotel paid $7 million for Leonard-Hagler), then sold the pay-per-view rights for millions to TitanSports, with a suggested retail of $29.95 per cable household.

--TitanSports of Stamford, Conn., parent company of the World Wrestling Federation, which claims Leonard-Lalonde could be a pay-per-view record breaker. James E. Troy, the TitanSports vice president, says the record for a pay-per-view event is a 9.2% buy rate for Wrestlemania IV last March.

“We’re rockin’ and rollin’, “ he said, “We’ve hit a home run. We’ve got $20 million in the bank before the fight. And that’s the floor, not the ceiling.”

How slick is it?

As slick as the fight posters.

The posters skillfully impart the packagers’ main theme, that Lalonde is somehow a more substantive opponent than his record suggests. In the poster, Lalonde appears, blond locks flowing, as a powerful champion who towers over Leonard by half-a-head.

One might think Leonard has bitten off a big hunk this time.

Never mind that Lalonde is 6 feet tall, not 6-1 1/2 as the publicity sheet says, and that Leonard is almost 5-11.

Leonard denies Lalonde was chosen because he’s white.

“If he was black, you guys would be saying, ‘This guy can really fight,’ ” he said.

Lalonde, who has remained a 3 1/2-to-1 underdog all week, got here on the strength of one victory, a televised fifth-round knockout of Leslie Stewart last May in Trinidad. Before that, Lalonde, was boxing unknowns in places such as Enid, Okla.; Mentor, Ohio, and Ashland, Ky.

He’s 28 years old, 31-2 with 26 knockouts, and must weigh 168 pounds or less tonight. No problem, he says. He said he has never even weighed 175 for a light-heavyweight fight.

“I weighed 173 for Stewart, and it was outdoors on a hot day,” he said.

“It was a 5-round fight, and I weighed 159 the next morning.”

Lalonde, boxing insiders seem to agree, packs a big right hand and not much else. Reviewing the tape of his knockout of Stewart, a viewer sees a slow-footed, relatively immobile light-heavyweight who delivers a hard right hand and seems to take a punch well.

When Leonard fights tonight, it’ll be for the first time since he upset Hagler here, and for only the second time since May, 1984, when he stopped Kevin Howard.

He’s 32, 34-1 with 24 knockouts, and expects to weigh in at 161 or 162 pounds this morning. He said he’ll enter the ring at around 165 pounds.

Donny Lalonde was 9 when his mother, Jean Lalonde, married Bob Wylie. His mother had divorced Donny’s father when he was 3.

Bob Wylie was a miner, away from home 4-to-6 weeks at a time.

One night, Wylie attacked his wife, choking and beating her. Then he started on Donny, and the other four of Jean Wylie’s children. One night, he came home from one stint in the mines and knocked 13-year-old Donny flat on his back with a closed-fist punch to his face.

The terror lasted for years, mother and son say, with Donny often hiding under the bed when his father came home and his mother living in terror.

Eventually, Donny ran away from home. And after 7 years of severe physical abuse, Jean Wylie left her husband and got a court order sending him to counseling. “It was a long time before I could even talk to him,” Jean Wylie said of her husband.

“And years later, I do have some compassion for him, even after the terrible things he did to us.”

And to his mother, it has never made sense that Donny Lalonde would become a boxer. “No, I’ve never understood it,” she said. “Not Donny, he was the shyest, the least outgoing of all my children. I can’t say if his experience with Bob had anything to do with it. . . . I don’t know that he can.”

And Donny himself, who is supposed to earn a minimum $5 million tonight, is laughing all the way.

At the prefight news conference this week, he looked at the ceiling and said: “I can’t believe they’re paying me $5 million to knock out an old, slow welterweight.”

And at that, Leonard had to smile, too.

Donny is perfect.