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Leonard was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1997, the same year he retired from professional boxing
NEED TO KNOW
- Sugar Ray Leonard is celebrating 20 years of sobriety
- The boxing legend and Olympic gold medalist took to social media to mark the milestone
- Leonard was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1997, the same year he retired from professional boxing
Sugar Ray Leonard is celebrating a major milestone — 20 years of sobriety.
The 70-year-old boxing legend shared a photo of himself holding a cake topped with lit candles in the shape of the number 20 in an Instagram post on Saturday, July 18.
In the caption, he wrote, “Twenty years of growth, gratitude and grace. One day at a time. 🙏🏿 #AA #Sobriety”
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In an essay penned for The Players Tribune in 2020, the athlete opened up about his past addiction issues, writing, “One of the main reasons I decided to get help was that I wanted my mother and father to see their son sober again before they left this earth.”
Leonard went on to explain that he was a “proud” member of Alcoholics Anonymous, adding, “There was no one thing. No come-to-Jesus moment, no one big mistake or drunken episode that put me over the top and caused me to finally admit to myself that I was an alcoholic.”
“It was years of waking up in the middle of the night, unable to remember how I got home … walking downstairs and cracking the garage door open to see if my car was there,” Leonard wrote. “It was years of waking up in the morning and seeing my wife crying, which let me know that I had f----- up the night before.”
Leonard added that prior to confronting his struggle with alcohol, he had battled an addiction to cocaine, which he discovered in the height of his fame in the 1980s.
During his boxing comeback in 1984, he stopped using cocaine while training and never looked back, he wrote, adding of his addiction struggles: “I had never run away from a fight. And I wasn’t about to start.”
In a 2021 interview with PEOPLE, Leonard reflected on winning the Olympic gold medal in light welterweight boxing at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, saying, “Words cannot describe the feeling that I had.”
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“I was nervous as heck,” Leonard added, noting that he had never been away from home for so long at the time. “I was so proud of myself. I wanted to go home, but I wanted to stay to bring home the gold medal first. It was just an amazing point in my life. I was like 20 years old and when I look back, that’s been like eons. 50 years ago.”
Leonard competed professionally between 1976 and 1997, winning world titles in five weight classes. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1997, the same year he retired from the sport professionally.
Read the original article on People
