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A younger brother cannot decently talk to an older brother like a father, so Michael could only watch and sigh. He loves Leon, who was still losing 33- second fights as recently as last month. By 1981, Michael had quietly won one of the several light-heavyweight championships from Eddie Mustafa Muhammad, and within another two years he consolidated all of the titles in a 15-round decision over Dwight Muhammad Qawi. Ten weeks before the Qawi fight, Spinks' common-law wife, the mother of their two-year-old daughter, was killed in an automobile accident. Spinks cried almost all the way to the ring. The old trainer Eddie Futch despaired. But the moment Spinks arrived, he seemed different. Leon was sitting at ringside in a cockeyed Stetson. "Straighten your hat, Lee," Michael said coldly.
Futch, a bouncy little man of 77, was a Golden Gloves teammate of Joe Louis' in 1934. Though only 140 lbs., he often sparred with Louis. "Always, on the last day before a fight, he wanted to be with me," Futch says happily. "I was difficult to hit." Eddie trained Joe Frazier, who was easy to hit. "The pressure Frazier exerted wore men down and made them make mistakes. He was perpetually in motion, always moving, bobbing and weaving. Tyson will go along and then explode. He probably hits as hard as Joe, though."
Norton, another Futch fighter, was as unorthodox as Spinks but less adaptable. "Most heavyweights are locked into a habit," says the sparring partner Qawi, co-champion no more. "But Michael can adjust." Even when Spinks is shadowboxing, Futch says, "I can see he's thinking, working out his plan, and changing it, and changing that." Spinks pledges, "I'll take something in with me, but I'll react to what I find in there."
Showing a modest manner uncommon among the unbeaten, Spinks explains, "I decided to become a heavyweight when I realized there was no money in being a light-heavyweight." The fight is promising his side $13.5 million. The new bulk of 208 lbs. becomes Spinks as well as his old 175, but he concedes, "I've been hit harder by the bigger men and have found no pleasure in it." (He will spot Tyson maybe 10 lbs.; Tyson will return 4 in. in height and 5 in. in reach.) On the chance that history was right about light-heavyweights never being able to step up, Spinks had left his daughter home from the first Holmes fight. "The second is the one she shouldn't have seen," he says, acknowledging a near-loss. In boxing, this qualifies as breathtaking honesty.
Spinks' fellow Olympian, Sugar Ray Leonard, laughs at that. "He always seems so cynical and pessimistic," Leonard says. "First doom, then gloom, and finally he prevails. At the Olympics, I remember Michael Spinks as a guy who did things that worked, though they happened to be wrong. He'd step right, step left, cross his feet and hit you. He'd always set you up for the punch he wouldn't throw. And he seemed forever to be looking for something."