Sport: Sugar in Paris

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French reporters were goggle-eyed when World Welterweight Champion "Sugar Ray" Robinson ambled into Paris' Claridge Hotel on the Champs-Elysées last November. Following the coffee-colored champ, like royalty's retinue, were his ex-show girl wife, Edna Mae, Manager George Gainford and his wife, two trainers, a secretary, Sugar Ray's golf professional, and his personal barber. Behind the procession a corps of panting bellboys wrestled with 32 trunks and 15 suitcases, containing (among other items) three radio sets, 140 jazz records, six punching bags, ten pairs of boxing gloves and Sugar's traveling wardrobe of twelve suits, five overcoats and 100 neckties. Explained Manager Gainford: "We just couldn't leave anybody, so we all came." It was, the French agreed, quite an entrance.

By last week French sportwriters were loudly agreeing on another point: 155-lb. Sugar Ray was also quite a fighter. In quick succession he had knocked out former European Middleweight (162 Ibs.) Champion Jean Stock in Paris (two rounds), hopped to Brussels and cooled off The Netherlands' Middleweight Champion Luc Van Dam (four rounds), then sped to Geneva to administer a ten-round boxing lesson to French Middleweight Yanek Walzack. Grinned Sugar Ray: "This is the most busiest schedule I ever had."

Frenzies & Receipts. Such performances soon had European boxing writers in rhapsodic frenzies. They compared Sugar Ray to a ballet by Lifar, a novel (with a terrific surprise ending) by De Maupassant, a poem by Mallarmé. Robinson's fist was cast for immortality for the Musée des Mains. Sugar Ray appreciated the compliments but he was more interested in the gate receipts. The three fights netted him some $23,000, enough to keep a cream-colored Cadillac in gas, wife Edna Mae in clothes ("Jacques Fath's dresses are so fresh and daring"), and to pay the troupe's hotel bill (for seven suites).

But it was not all work and no play for Sugar Ray. Hitting the Paris hot spots on his first night ashore, Robinson rounded out his retinue to an even ten by hiring Midget (4 ft. 4 in., 70 Ibs.)Jimmy Karoubi as "bodyguard" and interpreter. He also managed to find time to hammer out some expert drumming with Jazzman Sidney Bechet, then joined Trumpeter Roy Eldridge for a fast jam session. Appearances with Maurice Chevalier (a duet) and on the French radio (discussing jazz), plus a series of five-course luncheons rounded out Sugar Ray's rich, full life in Paris.

Watching & Waiting. When mass press interviews palled, Interpreter Karoubi livened up things by telling deadpanned stories of Robinson's shotgun prowess gaming for partridge on the edge of Harlem. As he talked, a ringing phone prompted Manager Gainford to relay the offhand information that the American Ambassador was calling—a fact noted with awe by gullible French reporters. Before Sugar Ray's fight last week with French Middleweight Champion Robert Villemain, Gainford also managed to dream up a white-lie account of their last meeting in Philadelphia, which Robinson won breezing. In the hopped-up Gainford version, the Frenchman floored Sugar Ray twice in a bruising battle. Explained unabashed Gainford: "If the French want to believe that, fine. It means a full house."