The Dream TeamU.S. Olympic Team Boxers Leo Randolph, Leon and Michael Spinks and "Sugar" Ray Leonard gave their opponents nightmares in the Summer of '76by Evan Kanew
The shock waves from their battles signaled a change in boxing's world order. A handsome American poet with fragile hands courageously bested a Cuban for the Olympic gold medal. A prayerful mama's boy from Tacoma, Wash. earned a decision over a veteran from Havana. Two St. Louis brothers played a game of one-upsmanship using their Cuban and Russian opponents' impaired senses as a measure. In the summer of 1976, these and other skirmishes told the world that the United States was reemerging as a prizefighting superpower.
Fighting in memory of his mother who had recently died of a heart attack, lightweight Howard Davis was named the tournament's most outstanding boxer.
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A standard-bearer since boxing was first added to the modern Olympics in 1904, the U.S. had slumped after winning a remarkable five gold medals at Helsinki in 1952. Things bottomed out when the '72 U.S. team managed only a single gold and three bronzes at Munich. Olympic-style boxing, ring historians generally agree, had become a concern more for Communist countries and their sports machines, while the gold medal standard was coming to mean less and less for Stateside athletes. Indeed, by the 1976 Olympics in Montreal the Soviet Union and Cuba, winners of the lion's share of gold medals in Munich, were expected to dominate again. But the Americans staged a coup, a coup dramatic enough to revive a belief in American invincibility.
In the afterglow of Montreal, amateur boxing grew more spectacular than ever in this country. That is, until the Olympic boycotts of 1980 and '84 hit back, seemingly harder than any Olympic medal drought ever could. The shock waves from the finest fighting achievement in U.S. Olympic history, resonated for nearly a decade before they died.
Was the class of '76 in fact the "best"-the Dream Team, as it has been called-of U.S. Olympic boxing? Consider that it was neither the most prolific medal winner, nor the source of the most professional champions. Why, the '84 team in Los Angeles—with Meldrick Taylor, Pernell Whitaker, Mark Breland and Evander Holyfield—won nine golds and 11 total medals; but their boycott-diluted field lacked a credible foil. In Montreal, on the other hand, American boxers outclassed veteran fighters in five of six finals, going three-for-three with gold at stake against Cuban champions.
Michael Spinks avenged a prior defeat at the hands of Rufat Riskiev, forcing the reigning world champion to retire late in the gold medal bout.
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This American revolution sowed a rich young crop of amateurs back home. "I saw them on television when I was a youngster," says Paul Gonzales, the '84 light flyweight gold medalist, voted the L.A. Games' most outstanding boxer. "I was 12 years old. Because of that team I dedicated my life to winning a gold medal."
That team inspired because it comprised classic characters: the born-again Christian flyweight Leo Randolph; the blue-collar Spinks brothers, Leon and Michael; the cultivated "Sugar" Ray Leonard. And it inspired because those characters performed so masterfully. "It was fun back then," remembers Breland, the eventual '84 welterweight gold medalist who was also glued to the tube that summer in a pivotal period of his nascent career. It was a defining season for a generation of American boxers. "We wanted to be great Olympians," Breland says of his '84 teammates. "That"-the summer of America's bicentennial-"was where it started."
The gold rush of '76 began with Randolph, the first of the American finalists and, at 18, the youngest member of the team. His mother was able to be in the Forum stands thanks to the hometown Tacoma Boys Club that raised the money for her trip. His coach had hitchhiked all the way to Montreal. On the Saturday night of the gold medal round, Randolph set the stage with a workmanlike 3-2 decision over Cuba's Ramon Duvalon. "Tomorrow," the young American said after the bout, "I'll be home for Church."
Army sergeant Charles Mooney fought off a cold and his first four opponents before falling to Yong Jo Gu of North Korea in the finals.
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Next, 25-year-old bantamweight Charles Mooney, an Army sergeant who was suffering from a bad cold, lost a unanimous decision to North Korea's Yong Jo Gu. Mooney settled for the lone U.S. silver, adding to a bronze that went to 21-year-old heavyweight John Tate, a Knoxville garbage truck driver who had only 19 months of boxing experience prior to the Games.
The U.S. again struck gold with Howard Davis, a 20-year-old Long Islander who once played drums for James Brown. Davis had been schooled in the ring by his father, a former boxer, and was fighting in memory of his mother. Two days before the opening ceremonies she had died of a heart attack. In the lightweight final, Davis beat Romania's Simion Cutov, a two-time European champion and veteran of over 200 matches. Davis was later selected for the Val Barker Award as the tournament's outstanding boxer.
The smiling Spinks brothers were Montreal's most spirited. Lifelong rivals, yet inseparable buddies, the Spinkses turned the Olympic tournament into their own private spitting contest. From a family of five brothers in St. Louis, they were raised fighting each other, and, as the well-told story went, having their clocks regularly cleaned by their only sister—and even their mom. Leon, a 23-year-old Marine lance corporal, was a long underdog for his light heavyweight final against Sixto Soria of Cuba. Still he was more nervous waiting for his 20-year-old kid brother to come on. "I wanted him to win more than I wanted me to win," Leon would say later, after watching Michael's bout from the back of the sold-out arena. "I kept asking the Lord to watch over him."
18-year-old Leo Randolph was the first American boxer to strike gold in Montreal.
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After drawing a bye and winning twice on forfeits, Michael had fought just once en route to the middleweight final against 27-year-old Rufat Riskiev of the Soviet Union, the reigning world champion. Eight months earlier Riskiev had beaten Michael in an Olympic tune-up. This time, however, it was Riskiev who needed a prayer. At the opening bell, Michael uncorked a vicious inside attack, dazing Riskiev in Round 1, decking him in Round 2 and finally diminishing him to whining about fouls. After taking a cannonball blow to the belt, the seasoned Riskiev simply quit at 1:54 of the third round.
On the heels of this electrifying upset, Leon emerged to upstage his brother. In what The New York Times would call "the most explosive (fight) of the night," Leon floored Soria twice (once flat on his face) before the bout was halted at 1:09 of the third - the whole thing ended 45 seconds faster than Michael's fight. The Spinkses became the first boxing brothers ever to win gold medals at the same Olympics. "The Spinkses have chins of granite," U.S. team manager Rolly Schwartz said at the time. "The Cubans battered everyone they faced until they came up against these guys, and they didn't even faze them."
When Leon Spinks stopped the highly favored Cuban Sixto Soria in the heavyweight final, he and Michael became the first boxing brothers to take home golds at the same Olympics.
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Still, the most unforgettable fighter of the Games was America's handsome and eloquent light welterweight Sugar Ray Leonard. Leonard, 20, fought with photos of his high school sweetheart and future wife, Juanita Wilkinson, and their three-year old son, Ray Jr., taped to his sneaker. He wrote love poems to Juanita. The Olympic gold, Leonard had vowed, was his only wish in the fight game. Instead of further pursuing the fistic arts, he planned to return victorious to his hometown of Palmer Park, and pursue a business degree at the nearby University of Maryland.
Besides all this cute stuff, Leonard's ring work was epic. Fighting with a perpetually swollen right hand, and a left fist that he could barely close, Leonard faced Cuba's Andrés Aldama in the gold medal bout. Aldama reached the final with five straight knockouts. Leonard resolved to fight Aldama head on. "All we have to do," he had told his team, "is keep [the Cubans] off balance." Leonard delivered, dropping Aldama once en route to a unanimous decision. Afterwards, he bid one of boxing's most famous farewells: "My journey has ended. My dream is fulfilled."
Of course Leonard would go on to become one of boxing's great professional champions, the first to win major belts in five weight divisions. Leon Spinks would record one of the most stunning upsets in history by taking away Muhammad Ali's world heavyweight title on Feb. 15, 1978, in just his eighth pro fight. And during the early '80s, Michael Spinks would capture the undisputed light heavyweight championship, before becoming the first fighter to move up from that class to win a share of the heavyweight title. By then, Tate, the bronze medalist, had made a cameo with the WBA heavyweight mantle in '79, and 1980 saw Randolph capture the WBA junior featherweight belt. The lone professional letdown was Davis, who despite his 36-6-1 career record, lost the only four title shots he got.
Yet the '76 team's significance is not measured in what its members later achieved as individuals: They can be called the Dream Team because they were a nightmare for Olympic boxing's reigning superpowers.
"The sportsmen of the U.S.S.R., the German Democratic Republic and Poland are living through a certain crisis," wrote Gleb Tolstikov, a Russian journalist (and former boxing champion), in an unusually candid report for the official Soviet news agency, Tass. Since its first major participation in the Olympics in '52, the Communist sports machine had amassed 30 golds among a total of 98 boxing medals (34 by the Soviet Union alone). Cuba had won seven medals since its first boxing prize at Mexico City '68. But, Tolstikov concluded, "Whereas the Europeans conducted their bouts in a calm manner, relying on their superiority in technique, the American and Cuban sportsmen demonstrated a very fast style without detriment to their technical skills... It can be said that today the boxing world is led by the schools of Cuba and the United States."
The unforgettable "Sugar" Ray Leonard fought with a photo of his high school sweetheart taped to his sneaker.
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Today, although Tolstikov might still write about the prowess of the Cubans (who did win three golds in Montreal); he wouldn't be so impressed with the Americans anymore. After the U.S.'s politically-charged Olympic boycott of 1980 and the retaliatory boycotts by Cuba and Russia in '84, the '76 team's triumphant legacy faded. The program lost the high-profile that it had achieved— especially on television—post-Montreal. Incidentally, the next two Olympiads witnessed two of the poorest U.S. boxing showings ever. "It became a carnival," says 74-year-old trainer Lou Duva, who attended his first Olympics in '76 and hasn't missed one since. "The kids didn't have enough to shoot for. They never kept up the momentum. The legacy is over."
This summer, like 20 years ago, the U.S.-Cuba rivalry occupies the center ring, particularly because Cuba has gone 18-0-1 versus U.S. boxers in a dual series initiated the year after Montreal. Yet even after the longest pre-Olympic training camp ever, the squadron in Atlanta is hard-pressed to conjure up anything like the class of '76. It is no surprise that the Americans will go home from Atlanta with six medals, at least five of them bronze, while seven Cubans still have a shot at the gold. Virtually no one expected the boys of summer to look as good as their ancestors. As Leonard said in the wake of his team's golden summer, "We were the most beautiful people in the world. All of us."
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