I read this article years ago. Then just couldn't find it.
Originally written in 2002.
Help In Getting Off Ropes And Into World
BY VIC ZIEGEL
Tuesday, June 25, 2002
It took too long, about 10 years too long, but Leslie Stewart finally figured out that the next phone call offering him a few thousand to take a fight that could lead to another fight and a real payday, something close to his best scores, was nothing more than a promise for punishment.
He was the light-heavyweight champion of the world for 105 days in 1987. Light-heavies are 30 pounds away from making serious money but Stewart did manage to take home $110,000 for a title defense in September of that year. He was the 5-1 favorite against somebody named Virgil Hill from North Dakota. Who knew they had fists in North Dakota?
Stewart looks back at that Atlantic City fight and realizes, "Everything was leaning toward a defeat." His manager, he said, used their expense money to put him in a "cheap hotel" in Philadelphia. "The camp wasn't properly set up and I didn't prepare properly. The fight came too close to winning the title and he was the wrong opponent. I should have said something."
He didn't know about losing. He was 26 years old, with a punishing jab, a record of 24-1, and skillful enough to avoid stiff punches. There was some talk about a million-dollar offer from Saudi Arabia "but I don't know what became of it," he says now. "I don't even know if it was true or just a PR thing."
His manager made the matches and Stewart took care of the fighting. Until the afternoon on "Wide World of Sports" against Hill. At the weigh-in he needed to step into a sauna three times to make the weight. Came into the ring, he said, "feeling weak." And Hill was the better fighter. "I guess it was meant to be," Stewart said. "But being an ex-champ, you still get opportunities. I was still in the mix."
He wasn't winning any more. Three years ago, he made a call of his own to F.I.S.T. (The Fighters' Initiative for Support and Training), the group founded by Gerry Cooney that helps boxers find careers after the gloves come off. Larry Holmes will be in town, for the 20th anniversary of his fight with Cooney, helping F.I.S.T raise money at a cigar night/buffet/auction tomorrow (tickets are available at 888-765-3478).
"I thought I was ready to retire when I called them," Stewart said recently, but that thought flew out the window when somebody else reached out for the ex-champ. He fought on the undercard of a Roy Jones show at Radio City Music Hall and lost another. His 24-1 had slipped to 31-12.
"You know you've lost something, that you're not the same fighter you were, but walking away is a hard thing to do," he said. "You've got to beat it out of a fighter. When I started losing I was taking fights I shouldn't have." Australia, Germany, France, where they could put ex-champ next to his name on the poster.
"I was losing to people I could beat 10 years ago. I should have retired, should have gotten the hint, but what else did I know how to do? You train but your body doesn't respond. It's talking to you but you don't listen. Training, running became a task. I hated it. The will wasn't there." The last thing he wanted was "to be an opponent, a bum, fighting for peanuts, getting hurt." He had four children to support, "and if you made a lot of money you could live off your interest. I couldn't. I had to stop fighting for chump change and do something with my life."
Last summer, he made another call to F.I.S.T, borrowed some money from the group and asked about finding a job. To F.I.S.T.'s great shock, he paid it back. And now he works five days a week, a counselor at a Bronx group home for troubled teenagers.
Stewart grew up in London "and I wasn't always Mr. Good, so I understand where they're coming from. They don't want to take direction. They have their own way of thinking. I'm trying to help them make better decisions."
The same decision that took him so many years.
E-mail: vziegel@edit.nydailynews.com
