Editing Sugar Ray Leonard (section)

==Change of plans==
Juanita Wilkinson, Leonard's high school girlfriend, told him she was pregnant in the summer of 1973. They decided to have the baby but marriage would be put off until after the Olympics in 1976. Leonard would continue to pursue his Olympic dream while she and the baby, Ray Charles Leonard Jr., lived with her parents. When Leonard boxed in the Olympics, he had a picture of Wilkinson taped to his sock.

Shortly before the Olympics, Wilkinson had filed an application to receive $156 a month in child support payments from [[Prince George's County, Maryland]]. She named Leonard as the father and the county's state attorney's office filed a civil suit against Leonard to establish paternity and get support payments for the child. Leonard learned of the suit several days after returning home from the Olympics. The headline in the ''[[Washington Star]]'' read, "Sugar Ray Leonard Named in Welfare Dept. Paternity Suit".<ref name= noble />{{rp|33–34, 43}}

Wilkinson went to the Olympics to watch Leonard box, but she did not tell him about the suit and never asked him for any money. "I didn't feel like being bothered by all those complications by asking him for any money for support", she said. Leonard pledged he would support his son, even if he had to scrap plans to attend college.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=G-0cAAAAIBAJ&pg=2051,2385110|title=Sugar Ray Admits to 'Little Ray' |work=Sarasota Herald-Tribune |date=August 6, 1976 |via=news.google.com |access-date=April 2, 2018}}</ref>

Leonard had hoped to get lucrative endorsements following his gold medal win, but the negative publicity from the paternity suit chased off any big commercial possibilities. To make matters worse, his father was hospitalized with [[meningitis]] and his mother had a heart attack. With neither parent able to work, with his child and the mother of his child to support, and without any endorsement opportunities, Leonard decided to become a professional boxer.<ref name= noble />{{rp|63}}