Sugar Ray Robinson

After basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, Robinson reported for duty as a corporal and was assigned along with Joe Louis to entertain the troops. It is worthy of note that Robinson, because of his forthright manner and conscientious regard for fair play, successfully accomplished the integration of otherwise segregated troops during those military exhibitions in which he appeared. He received an honorable discharge from the army on June 3, 1944, after taking a fall and suffering amnesia for more than one week. Robinson by the end of his military career had attained the rank of sergeant.

Six months after his induction, on August 27, 1943, Robinson went up against former three-way world champion Henry Armstrong, then thirty years old. Robinson, at age twenty-two, was greatly honored to box against one of his own boyhood heroes. The ten-round fight, arranged by Jacobs, would be the final contest of Armstrong's career. Although Robinson won by decision and was later accused of holding back in the bout, he retorted ambiguously that, "The only guys who went the distance with me were the guys I just couldn't knock out.… And I just couldn't knock out Henry Armstrong either."