3670 HOTW - Sugar Ray Leonard

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Teach a child to be polite and courteous in the home and, when he grows up,

he'll never be able to merge his car onto a freeway.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

We haven't had a Honey of the Week in a very long time.  Boxer Macho Comacho's shooting and death have been in the news for a few days, and that brought to mind the only boxer whose career I had followed.

Sugar Ray Leonard.

Isn't that just the cutest face you've ever seen?  I had a terrible crush on him in the '80s.  I suspect this photo is from his Olympic days, in his late teens.  He looks about 10 years old.

In his early thirties he had surgery for a detached retina, and so he decided to retire from the ring.  I breathed a sigh of relief.  Then, the next year, he un-retired.  I yelled "No, no, don't mess up that pretty face!"  I really was upset about it.

I needn't have worried.  He was GOOD!  That pretty face rarely got touched.

He's now in his mid-50s, and he has aged well.  He's still pretty. 

He published his autobiography last year, in which he reveals for the first time that he had been sexually abused by an Olympic trainer, and the effect that keeping that secret had on his life.  The NY Times article on the book is here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/sports/in-book-sugar-ray-leonard-says-coach-sexually-abused-him.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1353772940-XYsSyQho07lvcjNeTgiACg&_r=0

Now that he has told his story, he is involved in child abuse prevention activities.  This is a video of his speech at the October 29, 2012 child sexual abuse conference at Penn State:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JKaquBpYeQ.   Skip to 5:19 to skip the intro and see how pretty he is.

Sigh.
.