THE FIGHT OF MARVIN GAYE’S LIFE

For a brief moment in 1979, the fates of a tortured soul singer and a fast-rising boxer were entwined. Inside a pivotal, largely unknown chapter of Gaye’s story 

- MATTHEW ALLAN

ON THE EVENING of Sept. 28, 1979, Caesars Palace in Las Vegas felt like the center of the universe. Sugar Ray Leonard was fighting Andy Price for the North American Boxing Federation welterweight title. In the crowd, sports legends like Joe DiMaggio and Joe Louis mingled with entertainers like Smokey Robinson and Cary Grant. Diana Ross sat ringside, next to Motown founder Berry Gordy. And in Price's corner, amid the television cameras and cigar smoke, sat Price's manager, Marvin Gaye, feeling like his whole life was on the line.

Gaye often spoke in boxing metaphors, and in 1979 - in the wake of a costly divorce from his first wife, estranged from his second, gripped by cocaine addiction, and badly in debt to the IRS - the image of the pummeled prizefighter became particularly potent to him. "I was hanging onto the ropes. I was punch-drunk," he told writer David Ritz in his biography Divided Soul. "I kept telling myself that good news was around the corner, but there wasn’t anything around the corner except some big IRS dude ready to mug me. I was tired of getting beat up.”

Gaye’s relationship to boxing wasn’t merely metaphorical. He’d dabbled in the sport as far back as adolescence, and he remained a fan throughout his life. He even managed a couple of fighters in the mid-1970s, though they both proved disappointing.

At a 1978 benefit for a congressional candidate, he actually got in the ring with Muhammad Ali. Highly competitive and seemingly delusional about his abilities — never mind that the whole thing was meant to be a lark — Gaye was intent on actually boxing Ali.