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Fight week or not, Robinson and Papa Wiley are up each morning at 6 a.m., to pound out four to six miles of roadwork along the shady bridle paths of the Bois de Boulogne. Three times a week Sugar's gaudy Cadillac winds into a narrow courtyard off the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis for a 3 p.m. workout in the Central Sporting Club, where Sugar gets seriously down to work: three minutes of shadow boxing; six rounds of boxing, two with each of three sparring partners; three minutes with the body bag, and three with the light punching bag. In a final three minutes with the skip rope, Robinson goes into a spring-legged jitterbug routine that would spring the cartilages of most boxers.
But it is evidence of the kind of razor-edge conditioning that has helped to make Sugar Ray Robinson the best fighter in the ring today. At a time when boxing is suffering from a sad lack of topflight performers, Sugar is a sparkling exception to the rule.
"I'm a Boxer." Despite his unquestioned ability and the success of his European tour, Ray Robinson is neither the world's richest fighter nor its most popular. For one thing, even at a time when such a club-fighting brawler as Rocky Graziano was drawing $100,000 gates, Robinson had trouble lining up opponents good enough, or foolish enough, to step into the same ring with him. For another, U.S. crowds, always preferring a slugger to a boxer, were almost bored by his cold, businesslike perfection in the ring. "I'm a boxer," says Robinson, "not a fighter."
But Boxer Robinson has whipped some of the ruggedest fighters of the day. Most fighters are "one-handed." They have a good right cross or a good left jab, but rarely combine the two. Robinson's repertoire, thrown with equal speed and power by either hand, includes every standard punch from a bolo to a hook—and a few he makes up on the spur of the moment.
Fighting from a stand-up position which has lured a whole generation of young boxers away from Joe Louis' shuffling, deadpan approach, versatile Ray Robinson varies his style to suit his opponent. Against France's Robert Villemain last year, he solved Villemain's famed defensive shell by shucking him like an oyster, ramming uppercuts between the Frenchman's gloves. With hustling leather-thrower Kid Gavilan, Robinson danced nimbly out of range, picking the punches off with his gloves, then took his man with a fancy exhibition of counterpunching.
Whatever the talent of his opponent, Robinson can always count on a sure sense of rhythm and the ability to cut loose with a stunning flurry of punches with both hands. Tommy Bell, the last man to stand between Robinson and the welterweight (147 Ibs.) crown, describes his defeat with the uncompromising clarity of a man speaking from brutal experience: "He come at me with two punches, a left and a right. I didn't know which hit me first. The punches didn't hurt me, but when I started to move, my legs wouldn't go with me, and I fell over on my head."