Sugar Ray reveals his biggest fights outside the ring

First aired on Q (14/7/11)

Boxer Sugar Ray Leonard's life is filled with great accomplishments. In 1976 he won an Olympic gold medal. On November 30, 1979, he won his first world championship. He was the first boxer in history to earn $100 million. In January 1997, he was voted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. But on July 4, 2011, he achieved another remarkable feat: he marked five years of sobriety.

It's this victory over alcoholism and addiction that Sugar Ray is most proud of. Over the course of Ray's remarkable decades-long boxing career, Ray's public persona, "Sugar Ray," an aggressive and charismatic boxer, was constantly at odds with his private persona, "Ray," a quiet man struggling to keep his demons inside and his family together."It's just the dichotomy of this thing, this whole journey," Sugar Ray told Q host Jian Ghomeshi in a recent interview. "Sugar Ray" and "Ray" battled each other for years. It's only recently, thanks to sobriety, that Sugar Ray has found inner peace. "In the past five years, I've been able to make them coexist and not hurt each other."

It's this inner peace that inspired Sugar Ray to write a memoir. The Big Fight: My Life In and Out of the Ring chronicles Ray's many battles — in the ring, with addiction, and within himself. Sobriety has given him perspective he never had before, and a willingness to share his struggles. "My life has gotten better," he admitted. "Life was too challenging until I released all those demons, all that toxin."

Even though Sugar Ray finally felt "free" from his demons, giving "Ray," the troubled, introverted side of his personality a public platform was a difficult process. "I'm a guy, I'm a dude, I'm a fighter," he said. "You don't talk about your weaknesses, your flaws, or things that have happened in your life that you consider embarrassing as a guy." But once Sugar Ray realized that putting his story out there would only help him along his journey, he relented, revealing surprising and deeply personal stories, including the times he was sexually abused as an amateur boxer. "I was still hurting inside and I suppressed this thing for over 30 years," he said. "[Sharing what happened] was awkward, and kind of embarrassing, if you will, but I felt lighter. I felt better."

When Sugar Ray looks back on it all, he realizes that everything he did — becoming a professional boxer, coming out of retirement on three separate occasions, and turning to alcohol — were all ways to cope with the internal struggles he felt. "I was trying to do anything that would create a band-aid effect for the pain and guilt that I had."

But now that he's found sobriety and shared his story with the world, his struggles are gone. After four decades of fighting an internal war, Sugar Ray Leonard is finally at peace.

"I'm free," he said. "I did this for me."

The Big Fight: My Life In and Out of the Ring

Sugar Ray Leonard

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"The Big Fight takes readers behind the scenes of a notoriously corrupt sport and chronicles the evolution of a champion, as Leonard prepares for the greatest fights of his life against Marvin Hagler, Roberto Duran, Tommy Hearns, and Wilfred Benitez. At the same time Leonard fearlessly reveals his own contradictions and compulsions, his infidelity, and alcohol and cocaine abuse."

 Read more at Penguin Canada.