Sweet As Sugar

When Walker Smith Jr was 14, he attempted to enter his first boxing tournament, but was told he first needed an AAU membership card—which he could not legally procure until he was 16.He circumvented the AAU’s age requirement by using an ID card from a youth named Ray Robinson, who had quit boxing. So, Walker began his amateur fighting career under that name—and it stuck. Later, when a lady in the audience at a fight said he was “sweet as sugar,” the name “Sugar Ray Robinson” was born.