In Intel­li­gent Life’s review of Sweet Thun­der, a Sugar Ray Robin­son biog­ra­phy, they dis­cuss Sugar Ray’s entre­pre­neur­ial spirit and tenac­ity in keep­ing con­trol over his own busi­ness and brand.

Robin­son was savvy. He was the first black ath­lete to own most of the rights to his fights and to nego­ti­ate broad­cast­ing deals on radio and tele­vi­sion. […] Robin­son would reg­u­larly raise the issue of com­pen­sa­tion with pro­mot­ers only after tick­ets had been sold, when call­ing off a fight was not a pos­si­bil­ity. He would also only agree to fight if mob­sters weren’t involved. Once he was paid, he spent lav­ishly on fine clothes, fancy cars (he pre­ferred a pink Cadil­lac) and an exten­sive entourage.

But all of this came at a price. Barnes lamented that the sports writ­ers of the time, who had enor­mous power to build up and then tear down a fighter, soon turned on Robin­son and crit­i­cised him for his unsports­man­like greed. Of course many of these same writ­ers hap­pily buzzed around Frankie Carbo and other New York mob­sters who con­trolled the sport at the time.

Robinson’s finan­cial con­fi­dence extended beyond the ring. At a time when banks would not lend black peo­ple money for busi­nesses, he realised the only way he could become finan­cially inde­pen­dent was to invest his own money. […] After Robin­son pur­chased six build­ings in Harlem, “he did not need to go to the bankers ever again”. He owned sev­eral busi­nesses, includ­ing his famed (and now defunct) night­club, “Sugar Ray’s”.

This reminds me of the self-reliance quote from The 50th Law (pre­vi­ously).