“That was painful enough,” Leonard writes. “But last year, after
watching the actor Todd Bridges bare his soul on Oprah’s show about how
he was sexually abused as a kid, I realized I would never be free unless
I revealed the whole truth, no matter how much it hurt.” Continue Reading: http://bit.ly/kbVrAW
The opening segment of a forthcoming autobiography by Sugar Ray Leonard runs counter to the cunning style he used in winning boxing championships in five weight divisions more than a quarter-century ago. It is more like hearing the bell, rushing to the center of the ring and being hit with a straight right hand.
Most fans of Leonard remember him for his sweet smile and lightning-fast hands, as a transcendent and breakout celebrity in a brutal profession. But by Page 36 of “The Big Fight: My Life In and Out of the Ring,” to be published next month by Viking, Leonard has mentioned his cocaine use, growing up in a home with alcohol abuse and domestic violence, luckily surviving a car wreck with his mother at the wheel, almost drowning in a creek as a child who was unable to swim, and fathering a son at 17.
Two pages later, Leonard delivers the book’s bombshell while indirectly addressing a growing concern in the sports industry at large. He reveals publicly for the first time that he was sexually abused as a young fighter by an unnamed “prominent Olympic boxing coach.”
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