Leonard plotting a strategy for Manfredo

America at Large:Twenty years after authoring one of the greatest upsets in middleweight history, Ray Charles Leonard flies to London this weekend, en route to Cardiff, where his young protégé Peter Manfredo Jr will challenge super-middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe on Saturday week at the Millennium Stadium.

Leonard joined the Manfredo team in Los Angeles several weeks ago, and the common supposition has been he was there to replace Freddie Roach, the Providence boxer's trainer, who is in Puerto Rico fulfilling another commitment - training Oscar De La Hoya for his May 5th date with Floyd Mayweather Jr.

But that, said Sugar Ray, "is a misconception.

"Peter's dad (Peter Manfredo Sr) is training him (in Roach's absence), and he's done a perfectly fine job of it. Look, I'm not a trainer," said Leonard. "I probably won't even be in the corner in Cardiff. But my forte is strategy, and when asked, I said I'd be glad to help Peter develop a strategy for Calzaghe. I knew Manfredo pretty well from the first season of The Contender and I've always liked him. He has talent, determination, and guts.

"I'm just there to put my two cents in. I don't think my role would be any different whether Freddie was here or not."

Leonard's return to the ring, albeit in an advisory role, and the impending anniversary of his epic fight against Marvellous Marvin Hagler (April 6th, 1987), have led to reminiscences about that encounter. "Can you believe it's been 20 years?" Leonard chuckled as he recalled a bout in which he defeated (albeit controversially) a seemingly invincible opponent by persuading him to fight his, and not Hagler's fight.

But as we reminisced on the phone a few days ago, the conversation turned not to the Hagler bout, but to another fight - one in which for the only time in his career, Sugar Ray Leonard allowed himself to be outfoxed by an opponent.

If you choose to discount his last two fights, ill-advised comeback attempts that saw him beaten by Terry Norris and Hector Camacho, his 1980 first bout against Roberto Duran was the only time Leonard was beaten in his prime.

Leonard's strategy failed him on that night, he now concedes, because he abandoned it to wage a street war for which he was ill-suited. When they met in Montreal in June of 1980, Duran and Leonard boasted an aggregate record of 98-1. The previous fall, Leonard had captured his first world title, defeating Wilfred Benitez for the WBC welterweight championship, and had been matched against the fearsome Panamanian.

Duran and his boisterous travelling party were booked into the staid Hotel Bonaventure, Leonard at the more modern Heat Regency, and since their respective headquarters were only a few blocks apart, there were chance encounters in the days preceding the fight. Duran didn't speak much English back then, but he could give Leonard the finger whenever he saw him.

One morning Leonard's sister Sharon was walking down the street when she looked up and saw Duran leering at her from a passing car, making a gesture that did not require an interpreter. The macho gamesmanship took its toll on Sugar Ray. Trainer Angelo Dundee would later admit to New York columnist Dave Anderson that Leonard "got outpsyched".

"Duran abused Ray, and Ray couldn't handle it," said Dundee. "Duran would see Ray walking with his wife in the streets in Montreal and he'd yell 'I keel your husband. I keel your husband!' The night of the fight, Ray wanted to keel him. Ray wanted to fight the guy, not box him."

Twenty-seven years later, Leonard conceded that Duran did a masterful job of winding him up in Montreal. "I don't think it was calculated," he said. "It was more a case of Duran being Duran. He had that bully's mentality, and he always tried to intimidate opponents. But he did challenge my manhood, and I wasn't mature enough to know how to respond. All I could think about was retaliating."

Leonard wound up engaging Duran in a toe-to-toe slugfest so brutal that by the eighth round the paramedics had to rush to attend to his wife Juanita, who had fainted at ringside.

At the end of 15 gruelling rounds, Duran prevailed on a close but unanimous decision. When the new champion was asked what had made the difference in the fight. Duran responded by pounding on the left side of his chest and saying "Corazon." Was he suggesting that Leonard had lacked heart? "No," Duran replied through an interpreter. "If Leonard did not have a heart, he would not be alive tonight."

After the fight Leonard considered retirement. "I was serious, or serious about considering it, anyway," he confirmed when we talked about it this week. "It had nothing to do with the decision. I wasn't demoralised. . . . but I was mentally and physically exhausted. I'd never taken such a physical beating. The doctor had to come up to my hotel room later that night to drain blood from my ears."

In the end, of course, Leonard did not retire. Instead he returned to engage Duran in a rematch in New Orleans that autumn. This time the battle would be waged on his terms, not Duran's, and by the eighth round he had made such a mockery of the once-proud Panamanian that Duran turned to the referee, threw up his hands, and said "No mas!" Not, mind you, that Ray Leonard is predicting that Peter Manfredo is going to make Joe Calzaghe quit.

The Welshman is the longest-reigning world champion extant, and on April 7th he will have the support of 35,000 people in the stadium. "But the emotional aspect of the fight is the key factor, and Peter has the mental stability," said Leonard. "I've watched him grow from his days on The Contender and he's exuding a confidence and bravado that gives me confidence in him. I really give Peter a shot in this fight."