Sports
Sugar Ray Robinson
1921–1989 · boxer, world welterweight and middleweight champion
Often ranked the best pound-for-pound boxer ever, he spent his early childhood in Detroit, a block from Joe Louis, before moving to Harlem.
- Born
Ailey, Georgia- Died
Los Angeles, California
aged 67- Birth name
- Walker Smith Jr.
- Also known as
- Sugar Ray
- Detroit years
- 1920s–1933
- Field
- Sports
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Walker Smith Jr. was born in rural Georgia; his father moved the family north to Detroit, where he found construction work. The boy grew up in the Black Bottom area and, at eleven, lived on the same block as a seventeen-year-old Joe Louis, whose early workouts at the Brewster recreation center he watched and admired. After his parents separated, his mother took the children to Harlem, where he began boxing and borrowed the amateur card of a Ray Robinson, the name he kept. He came back to Detroit as a star: on February 5, 1943, at Olympia Stadium, Jake LaMotta handed him the first loss of his professional career, and three weeks later Robinson won the rematch in the same building. The 2025 revival of the Brewster–Wheeler center counts him among the fighters who trained there as boys.
Highlights
- World welterweight champion 1946–1951
- Won the world middleweight title five times between 1951 and 1958
- Career record of 174 wins, 19 losses and 6 draws, with 109 knockouts
- First professional defeat came at Detroit's Olympia Stadium, against Jake LaMotta in 1943
- Inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 2
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Played here · 1943
Olympia Stadium
Demolished · 1927–1979
Site of his two February 1943 fights with Jake LaMotta: his first professional loss and his revenge three weeks later.
Played here · early 1930s
Brewster–Wheeler Recreation Center
The Black Bottom recreation center where he watched Joe Louis train; reopened in 2025 as home of the Kronk Gym.