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Sugar Ray Robinson's Ring Magazine Championship Belt
Long ago in an era long gone, "The Belt" meant only thing: the trinket awarded by The Ring Magazine to the victors of championship fights. The Ring, which began publishing in 1928, was King of the Ring, and its dominion the legitimacy of the sport. The Ring was the ultimate authority in a game rank with hucksters and hoodlums. With rigorous ethics, it ranked the fighters, recognized which bouts should be considered championship fights, and then certified the winners for posterity by presenting them with The Belt. Though these belts looked like costume jewelry compared to the Buick-sized, rhinestone-studded, doo-dad-covered belts warded today by the million or so different alphabet-soup boxing organizations, all the glitz in the world can't make up for these belts' lack of tradition and sense that theirs is "The Belt," the singular standard of excellence sought with a passion by every fighter who steps in the ring to fight for a title. Sadly, few of those original belts are available for public sale, no doubt because so many of them have been zealously kept by the families of the great boxers of that era and handed down from generation to generation as the one item they refuse to part with, and some others have been bequeathed to the Boxing Hall of Fame. Thus, we are extremely proud to be able to offer not just "The Belt" but "<i>The</i> Belt" -- no less than the first Ring Belt awarded to Sugar Ray Robinson! You may want to read that sentence again, just to make sure you read it right the first time. It's Sugar Ray's first belt, given after he beat Tommy Bell in a 15-round decision on December 20, 1946 at Madison Square Garden for the vacant welterweight crown. That was only the beginning for the man regarded as the best fighter, pound for pound, in history, who only 5 years before had risen out of Harlem bearing an identity not even his own. In 1939, Walker Smith, who had moved to New York from Detroit as a kid, wanted to fight in the Golden Gloves and needed to produce an AAU card. So he borrowed one from a friend named Ray Robinson, and never gave it back. During those Golden Gloves tourneys, a sportwriter told his trainer George Gainsford, "That's a sweet fighter you got there." Someone else remarked, "Sweet as sugar." The name would so transform the sport that a second "Sugar Ray" adopted it in the '70s and became almost as popular. It's almost incidental that Robinson won the middleweight title a record 5 times in addition to the welterweight crown; with Sugar Ray, weight divisions are secondary to his style and his presence. Up on his toes, popping the jab like a pistol, readying the big punch, and landing it with face-bending precision and force -- this is the image invoked by the name. Once, when beating him was an impossibility, just surviving him was a sort of victory -- remember DeNiro in <i>Raging Bull</i>, as Jake LaMotta, half dead but triumphantly croaking to the Suar Ray character, "You didn't knock me down, Sugar Ray!" Robinson lived life as he fought, to the fullest, though his excesses in the form of philandering cost him a few marriages and with drugs cost him his health. But it wasn't until 1970, at the age of 49, that he finally accepted that his skills were gone. He died in 1989 at age 68, having lived enough for 10 men. Hence, the belt is a dual homage, to the splendor both of The Ring and of Sugar Ray Robinson. It measures 37" long and 7" high, with a red, white, blue and gold sash, and consists of 3 gold medal plates with each image on top and wreath borders, linked by small chains, all still intact. Large center plate has a small enamel American flag and is engraved, "The Ring Magazine Award, Welterweight Championship Won by Ray Robinson." The smaller left plate engraved, "Defeated Tommy Bell 15 Rounds." Smaller right plate engraved, "Madison Square Gardem Dec. 20, 1946." Magnificent is too tepid a word for the belt, which is EX at the least with the only flaws some minor soiling of the sash and slight discoloration on the metal plates, but no real tarnishing to speak of. Calling it signficiant in the annals of American sports history is also too tame; it's actually one of the most significant pieces of Americana, period. Expect calls from a few museums. Belt comes with a detailed LOA from Mildred Robinson, Sugar Ray's last wife. Sugar Ray and The Belt -- both are the gold standards.
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