When it comes to sports, Sugar Ray Leonard may have finally met his match.
After professionally boxing in the ring from 1977 to 1997 and winning 36 out of 40 fights, the retired athlete revealed which sport is harder than it looks: Pickleball.
“It is competitive,” Leonard, 69, exclusively told The Post at the 2025 Emmys Pickleball Slam Fundraiser on May 18. It is extremely competitive. I just like to participate. I don’t play that well, I’m not that good but you know what? I care. I really care.”
When it comes to playing pickleball or any other sport, the professional boxer has one sound piece of advice: “It’s all about the heart. Do that.”
Leonard — who was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1997 — revealed that one of his secret weapons when he competed was he “drank a lot of coffee.”
In 2021, the Skechers spokesman reflected on his time in the ring, and the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal where he took home the gold medal in light welterweight boxing.
“Words cannot describe the feeling that I had,” Leonard told People.
Traveling to Canada for the competition also marked his first time leaving home for an extended period of time.
“I was nervous as heck,” Leonard confessed. “I was so proud of myself. I wanted to go home, but I wanted to stay to bring home the gold medal first. It was just an amazing point in my life. I was like 20 years old and when I look back, that’s been like eons. 50 years ago.”
It still holds as one of the author’s proudest moments he’s experienced.
“It’s the most precious moment in my career, in my life,” gushed Leonard. “I never forget that moment. Representing myself, representing my country. And it wasn’t about fame and fortune.”
That medal is now kept in a safety deposit box, but he has let those closest to him try it on.
“When some friends or just individuals come over sometimes I’ll show it, let them take a picture of it around their neck, ‘Here you go. You get one around your neck,’” Leonard explained.
The star wants those competing in the Olympic games to remember one thing: “I tell them 100% to believe in themselves because if they don’t, no one else will.”
“This is your opportunity, this is their chance for success, stardom, and accomplishment,” he elaborated. “People can say I was a world boxing champion professionally, but when people say I’m an Olympic gold medalist, that speaks volumes. That is precious. There is no amount of money that can pay for that. You can’t pay for it. You have to deserve that. You have to go for that.”
Throughout his successful career, Leonard also struggled with substance abuse. He opened up about getting sober while on “Oprah: Where Are They Now” in 2016.
“There’s a part of me that is a good man, an honest man,” he shared during a sit-down. “And there is Sugar Ray Leonard – who is ego driven. Who is a tough SOB in the ring. Who had money. Who had fame. And at some point, didn’t really appreciate it and took advantage of that.”
Leonard recalled his first wife, Juanita Wilkinson, whom he was married to from 1980 to 1990, saying, “You are two different people.”
“I would get angry about that and go and have a drink,” he said. “But then when my present wife, Bernadette, said to me, ‘There are two of you,’ I knew there was a problem.”
He got more candid about his past infidelity, substance abuse and childhood molestation in his 2011 memoir, “The Big Fight: My Life In and Out of the Ring.”
“Many many moments, many many nights or days I would wake up and not remember what the hell just happened at night,” Leonard said on Winfrey’s OWN network. “I always knew I had a problem, just never admitted it to myself. I never believed it. And that’s deadly, that’s wrong. One day I woke up — nine years ago I woke up — and life couldn’t be better.”
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