Hard partier
recalls scoring
amazing upset
of Ali in 1978  

Leon Spinks, right, connects with a right hook against Muhammad Ali during their championship fight in Las Vegas on Feb. 16. 1978. Spinks scored one of the greatest upsets in boxing history by winning.  

ASSOCIATED PRESS

LAS VEGAS, Feb. 15 -  Muhammad Ali wasn't taking Leon Spinks too seriously to begin with. Still, he was dutifully heading out for an early morning training run when he bumped into Spinks in the hotel lobby. Spinks was coming in from a night on the town, a woman on each arm.

 "HEY, MUHAMMAD ALI," Spinks called out, "heavyweight champion of the world."
       Ali headed to the coffee shop, suddenly in no mood to run.
       "What am I doing here?" he asked his confidant, Gene Kilroy. "I'm the two-time heavyweight champion of the world, and this guy is nothing."
       Ali wasn't alone in his thinking.
       Twenty-five years ago, Ali was indeed aging, but no one was giving much of a chance to Spinks, the young Olympic gold medalist with only seven pro fights.
       In his dressing room before the fight, a CBS executive asked Ali to let the bout go a few rounds so the prime-time television audience would have something to watch.
       They ended up getting 15 sometimes brutal rounds, and an improbably new heavyweight champion. When it was over, Spinks had pulled off one of the greatest upsets in boxing history, wearing down a fading Ali in the late rounds to win the title.
       In February 1978, Spinks was 24 and on top of the world.
       He wouldn't stay there long.
       Today, though, he has no regrets.
       "I don't think I won too young," Spinks said. "Anybody who had the opportunity like I did would have took it, too."
       --
       To find the real Leon Spinks, you had to look beyond the gap-tooth grin and his uncanny ability to party all night long.
       That's of course if you could get past his gold laden security man, Mr. T.
       Before he made it as an actor on "The A Team," Mr. T was best known for being Spinks' bodyguard. Somehow, the glowering security man with a mohawk and gold chains was a perfect fit for the happy-go-lucky champion.
       Spinks was fighting on the undercard of the Muhammad Ali-Larry Holmes title fight in 1980, and Mr. T stood outside his dressing room, arms crossed and looking menacing.
       "Don't mess with Mr. T. He'll dot your I," one wag warned.
       -
       Spinks had a problem with elevators: He was usually trying to find one after a night of partying.
       A few days before Spinks met Ali in their September 1978 rematch in New Orleans, promoter Bob Arum was coming down for breakfast.
       As he stepped out of the elevator, Spinks tottered into it and promptly collapsed in a drunken stupor.
       "I yelled to him, 'Leon, you're fighting Muhammad Ali in three days. Are you crazy?"' Arum recalled.
       "What's the matter? I just got in from roadwork," Spinks mumbled.
       The week before the fight, the city held parades for Ali and Spinks when they arrived in town. Ali came in a day before Spinks, and rode in a limousine waving to the crowd that gathered to see the legendary fighter.
       Spinks was the champion, and he came in the next day. He, too, rode in a limousine, waving from the open sunroof and smoking marijuana as he made his way through the streets of New Orleans.
       "Leon is sitting there and he pulls out a joint and starts smoking it," Arum said. "He's going through this parade route with all these people, smoking a joint. The sheriff's office went crazy. They didn't know what to do."
       The rematch didn't go well for Spinks. Ali regained the WBA title with a 15-round decision before 63,350 people at the Superdome, and Spinks would never be a champion again.
       Both Ali-Spinks fights were broadcast on national TV, making Spinks and his big toothless smile a household oddity, if not a household name.
       President Carter was among those watching, taking in the fight at Camp David with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.
       Carter tried to call Ali with his congratulations, but Ali was at the postfight news conference. Later, some of Ali's entourage thought it would be a good idea to call the president back.
       They called the White House, which patched the call through to Camp David. Carter took it at 1:36 a.m.
       --
       Spinks turned to pro wrestling after his boxing career fizzled, then went to bartending school.
       One day, he called Jackie Kallen to come down and see him at a tavern in a run-down area of Detroit.
       Kallen had been around boxing in various roles, her most prominent as manager of James Toney. She was good enough as a woman in a man's sport that Meg Ryan plays her in the movie "Against The Ropes," which will be released in April.
       Kallen sat down and ordered a soft drink. The man sitting next to her ordered a beer, and Spinks asked if he wanted a lime to go with it.
       "What is he saying?" the man asked Kallen. "I can't understand a word."
       Spinks tried again, but knew it was hopeless.
       "I ain't got no teeth, and it's hard to talk without my teeths," he said.
       It was nearing the holidays, and Kallen had an idea. She called her dentist, who made Spinks some new teeth.
       "It was just like the song where he got his teeth for Christmas," Kallen said. "That was probably the most unique gift I ever gave anybody. It was unusual but practical."
       --
       Being heavyweight champion at 24 was a bad combination for a guy who liked good times more than training. Spinks held the title only seven months before Ali beat him in the rematch in New Orleans.
       Spinks would fight again for the heavyweight title in 1981, but he was no match for Larry Holmes, who knocked him out in the third round.
       He was mugged in Detroit that same year. The muggers took his $45,000 fur coat. Worse, they also stole his false teeth.
       Like everything else in his life, he took it in good cheer.
       "Everybody has ups and downs," Spinks said. "All you got to do is let it roll on."
       Spinks' last fight of any significance was a knockout loss to Dwight Qawi for the cruiserweight title in 1986. He lost seven of his next nine fights, and after Tommy Morrison stopped him in the first round in 1988, his boxing license was taken away. He didn't fight again for three years.
       "Champions are made on the inside. It's not always your skill level but a certain intelligence the great ones have," said Emanuel Steward, who was once Spinks' trainer. "If you don't have that, you're championship will be short-lived."
       Spinks would return to the ring in 1991, but it was against a collection of bums with losing records looking to fight a name. He was reduced to being an eight-round undercard fighter when he lost his last fight in April 1995 to a boxer named Fred House.
       The same fighter who was paid $3.5 million to fight Ali in their rematch was, by then, long since broke.
       "That was a lot of money then," Arum said. "But it didn't matter how much it was, it was all going to the same place.
       "It was just numbers to Leon."
       --
       Spinks was well into his downward spiral when he moved down in weight to fight Qawi for the 190-pound title in March 1986. As usual, he had partied instead of training, and Qawi was giving him a beating.
       Steward was in Spinks' corner, and by the sixth round, he had seen enough. Spinks was still standing but taking a lot of punishment when Steward stopped the fight.
       "What took you so long?" Spinks asked. "I could get killed with someone like you in my corner."
       Losing didn't bother Spinks, but he could see his trainer was sad.
       "Forget it," Spinks said. "Let's go back to my room and have a drink."
       --
       On the phone from St. Louis, Spinks is talking about the gym he's trying to open in Chicago and his three sons, who are all boxers.
       One of them, Cory Spinks, fights March 22 in Italy against Michelle Piccirillo for the IBF welterweight title, and Spinks will be there to cheer him on.
       He won't be offering his son much advice.
       "He's got it pretty much down pat," he said.
       These days, Spinks travels with high school principal Rick Guy to autograph shows, where he signs memorabilia for money. For $20, he'll sign a picture. Boxing gloves are $50.
       "It gives him spending money, keeps him going," Guy said. "People will talk to him about his driving record, his teeth. He laughs about it. I think that's why he's still very popular."
       --
       In 1979, Spinks was fighting Gerrie Coetzee in Monte Carlo. If he won, he had a chance to regain the heavyweight title Ali vacated when he retired after beating Spinks.
       Prince Rainier was ecstatic about landing the big event and held a press conference for the two fighters. Spinks, though, showed up five hours late.
       Arum, meanwhile, kept getting complaints from the hotel manager that they had to replace the entire minibar every day in Spinks' suite.
       When the fight began, Coetzee came out timidly and Spinks was all over him in what looked like a mugging. To defend himself, Coetzee threw out a right hand, and Spinks suddenly went down.
       At ringside, the prince - still smarting over Spinks' snub - was cheering wildly for Coetzee.
       Spinks got up only to run into the same right hand again and went down a second time. He got to his feet only to be knocked down a third time, and the fight was over in the first round.
       The prince held a dinner for 100 people at a fancy restaurant, a celebration that lasted the whole night.
       Spinks went back to the hotel only to find out the bar was closed. He broke in anyway, took out bottles of liquor and left others broken in his wake.
       The hotel sent Arum a bill for $12,000 for the damage. He deducted it from Spinks' purse.
       "When I signed him, I didn't know he was nuts," Arum said. "I found out quick enough."
       --
       Leon Spinks, leading man.
       During the day, Mark Mason answers the phone at Budget Movers in Tulsa, Okla. His real passion, though, is boxing - and making movies.
       Spinks plays a trainer in his latest flick, a $150,000 affair called "Prize Fighter" that also features Tonya Harding and a cameo by actor Gary Busey.
       The movie's plot revolves around the true story of a toughman bar fighter who goes into a downward spiral after his wife dies, then returns in a "Rocky"-like comeback to win a fight in her honor.
       "The key person in this movie is a promoter we all grow to love," Mason said. "I don't boast the fact that it's actually me."
       Spinks won't get rich off his role - $250 a day and a room at a Motel 6 - but Mason said he did so well, he's already written two new parts for him.
       "He's a heck of a dude," Mason said.
       One of those parts is playing a genius who can't speak. In his debut movie, Spinks has lines, though they didn't always come off well.
       "We had to overdub some of the stuff to make his voice sound better," Mason said. "But don't tell him I told you that."
       --
       Ask anybody who knows Leon Spinks about him, and the first thing they do is come up with a good story. The next thing they do is talk about how much they like him.
       "What a character, but a great guy," Arum said. "He was the nicest guy in the world, but totally nuts. He wouldn't harm a flea, but he was just a goofball."
       "He is one of the sweetest, nicest, most innocent people I know," Kallen said. "Everybody made fun of him because of the way he talked and the missing teeth. But he was such a good sport about it. He was always best at laughing at himself."
       Today, Spinks gets by, living with his wife in a Chicago suburb, watching his sons box and hoping to open a gym. The money's gone, but he's still recognized everywhere he goes.
       Sometimes, that's good enough.
       "Hey, I'm a likable guy," Spinks says.
       
       © 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.