“SUGAR” RAY LEONARD
“Sugar” Ray Leonard, the International Boxing Hall of Famer, six-time world champion and 1976 Olympic gold medalist, joins NBC Sports Group as the boxing analyst for its 20 live Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) shows.
Leonard has more than a decade of broadcasting experience, having served as a boxing analyst for several broadcast and cable networks. Leonard was host and mentor for the first, second and third seasons of the critically acclaimed boxing competition series, The Contender, on NBC and ESPN. In addition, he has appeared in films including The Fighter and I Spy, served as a consultant on the film Real Steel, and competed in Dancing With the Stars.
Early in his boxing career, Leonard won three National Golden Gloves titles, two AAU championships and the 1975 Pan American title. At the Olympic Games in Montreal in 1976, he overcame severe hand injuries to win the gold medal in the light-welterweight (139-pound) division. In November 1979, Leonard won the World Boxing Council’s welterweight title, and continued to claim victories in several matches over the next decade against opponents including Roberto Duran, Thomas Hearns and Wilfred Benitez.
In 1984, Leonard retired, subsequently returning to the ring three years later to defeat “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler and win the World Boxing Council’s middleweight title. The fight is still considered one of the greatest professional boxing matches of all time.
During his twenty-year professional career, Leonard also won world titles in the welterweight, junior middleweight, super middleweight, and light heavyweight divisions. He was the first boxer to win world titles in five different weight classes.
Leonard retired from boxing in 1997 with a 36-3-1 record (25 knockouts) and was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame the same year.
In 2009, he established the Sugar Ray Leonard Foundation with his wife Bernadette, which is committed to raising funds for research and awareness towards a cure for Juvenile Diabetes. In addition, Leonard authored a New York Times bestselling memoir, The Big Fight: My Life In and Out of the Ring.
