I used to watch Friday Night Fights sponsored by Pabst Blue Ribbon and Gillette, so many of the names in SWEET THUNDER: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SUGAR RAY ROBINSON are quite familiar, especially Carmen Basilio, Gene Fullmer, and Bobo Olson, all of whom Sugar Ray fought at one time or another.

Sugar Ray fought in almost two hundred fights with a 173-19 record along with six draws. He fought until he was forty-three with a two year hiatus to try to make it in show business. He sometimes fought with only a week to prepare. If he wasn't pound-for-pound the greatest, he was in the top five.

Wil Haygood gives us a good look at fight action, including the Raging Bull fights (He fought LaMotta six times) and Sugar Ray's attempt to dethrone Joey Maxim for the light heavyweight title, where he lost on a TKO, ostensibly because of the heat in the ring. But that's one of the main objections I have about the book. Haygood doesn't spend enough time describing ring action. He's more concerned with sociological implications. We see Ray entering the military during WWII (and also going AWOL); we see him as the proprietor of a Harlem nightclub and barber shop. We see him trying to make it as a tap dancer and MC. Another drawback is Haygood emphasis on pink Cadillacs, fur coats and jewelry dripping from Robinson's wives. And there's too much stilted and flowery language. This sort of thing: "She was quietly beautiful. She was the kind of woman who slipped into places. Her voice was soft and her stature regal." Then, for some reason, Haygood includes anecdotes, and nothing much new, about Lena Horne, Miles Davis, and Langston Hughes, despite the fact that they Ray barely new them. I wanted more Kid Gaviland and Harry Greb.

Towards the end of the book, Haygood dispenses with the trivia and provides extensive detail on Robinson's relationship with deprived kids. After a failed attempt at making in the movies (He was in "The Detective" with Frank Sinatra) he spent the remainder of his life building the Sugar Ray Robinson Youth Foundation. Despite Haygood grating prose style, this was an enjoyable book for me; I knew many of the fighters mentioned and had actually seen some of the fights on TV. There's also a short sequence where Sugar Ray is asked to manage the then Cassius Clay. Ray turned him down; he was too weird. But we do discover that Ali borrowed the bolo punch from Ray.

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