Sugar Ray Leonard vs. Marcos Geraldo
Ray Leonard 153 lbs beat Marcos Geraldo 160 lbs by UD in round 10 of 10
- Date: 1979-05-20
- Location: Centroplex, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA
- Referee: Pete Giarusso 7-2
- Judge: Maxie Docusen 6-3
- Judge: Charles Joseph 6-3
Leonard Pounds Out Unanimous Decision Over Geraldo
With snake-quick rights and left hook combinations, Sugar Ray Leonard pushed his professional boxing record to 22-0 today with a unanimous decision over Mexican middleweight champion Marcos Geraldo.
Although Geraldo carried the fight to Leonard all 10 rounds, he was not quick enough to make use of his four-inch reach advantage over the 1976 Olympic gold medal winner from Palmer Park, Md.
"It was my toughest fight," said Leonard. "In the second or third round, we butted heads and I was seeing three. I kept moving. It was the reason I kept moving so much, trying to get my eyes so I could keep them in focus.
"A few times I got into a corner intentionally because I saw an opportunity to really do a number on him," he said. "Unfortunately, he was in better shape than I thought he was."
Judges Charlie Joseph and Maxie Docusen scored the fight 6-3-1 in favour of Leonard, while referee Peter Giarrusso gave Leonard a 7-2-1 advantage.
Fighting at 153 pounds, Leonard was seven pounds lighter than Geraldo. Although it was the heaviest he has weighed for a bout, the extra weight did not slow Leonard and Geraldo, although aggressive, could not counter the smaller man's speed.
Geraldo, 24, had a 42-12 record going into the match. He had won his last seven fights by knockouts.
Leonard, who turned 23 while training here last week, plans to use the victory over Geraldo as a step toward taking on Wilfredo Benitez, the World Boxing Council's welterweight champion. He reportedly plans to fight Benitez in September, but Leonard's manager has not confirmed the bout.
Leonard was cut slightly over his right eye in the seventh round, but finished with energy to spare and in high spirits. At the bell ending the 10th round, Geraldo grabbed Leonard in a bear hug and lifted him off the floor, a victory salute for the man he knew had beat him.
In the fifth round, Geraldo forced Leonard into a corner and pounded away with both hands. But, typical of the entire fight, Leonard swatted away some punches with his hands and slipped others with quick, short head movements. [1]
Notes
- Leonard was quoted in the November 26, 1979, issue of Sports Illustrated as saying the following about his fight against Geraldo: "He hit me and I saw, like, a shadow. I saw three of him. I thought, 'Oh, shoot!' I couldn't distinguish who was who. Then pow! he hit me again. Then I knew the one in the middle was him. Now that I think about it, it's amazing—that punch cleared up my head....I learned survival in that fight. I found out how to reach down, back deep down, and bring everything up. I had to use every trick and tactic I knew, and some I didn't know, to get away from him."
- Manager and trainer Angelo Dundee picked Leonard's opponents, but assistant trainer Dave Jacobs did not agree with Dundee's choice of Geraldo. In the 1981 book A Fist Full of Sugar: The Sugar Ray Leonard Story, Jacobs was quoted as saying the following: "There's no doubt in my mind that Ray is the best welterweight in the world. And I believe he can beat a Cuevas, Palomino, or Duran if he has to. But these guys are all welterweights, too. Ray's no middleweight, and he's got no business fighting them as far as I'm concerned. This Geraldo was a real tough monkey. He had to sweat it out to get down to 160 pounds. By fight night, he must have ballooned back to 165. Ray weighed only 153 with all his clothes on. It just doesn't make sense to have overgrown middleweights beating on him."
- Leonard was diagnosed with a detached retina in 1982. In his 2011 autobiography, The Big Fight: My Life In and Out of the Ring, Leonard wrote the following: "While I have no proof, I believe the problems with my detached retina, diagnosed three years later, originated with the damage from Geraldo."
- Leonard said in the August 2017 issue of The Ring that Geraldo had the best chin of anyone he faced. "I would hit the guy with 20 [consecutive] shots, shots that would normally knock out a guy," Leonard said. "All he would do was turn his chin and look right back at me."