There was much anticipation on a Tuesday evening in November 1982 at the Baltimore Civic Center. There, Sugar Ray Leonard, the pride of Palmer Park, Md. — just 26 but with both world championship welterweight belts and a sparkling 32-1 record — invited the boxing literati and glitterati to an event.
He had stopped Thomas “the Hitman” Hearns a year earlier. Forced his lone defeater, Roberto Durán, to famously plead, “No más,” in a rematch. Pinned the first defeat on Wilfred Benítez.
There seemed but one challenge left, and the fight world clamored for it: to step up from 147 pounds and meet the world middleweight champion, Marvelous Marvin Hagler. That was why Leonard invited Hagler to what was billed as a charity event that evening, and why Hagler accepted.
But before the evening ended, Leonard, who months earlier had a detached retina surgically repaired, shocked the audience. He announced to the assemblage that he would fight no more.
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Hagler got played. Disrespected, yet again. Just like he was in the wake of his death Saturday at 66, when Hearns claimed on social media that Hagler was incapacitated by a coronavirus vaccine and Hagler’s wife responded to the report as a “stupid comment” and “nonsense.”
We may never know what claimed Hagler. But I do know this: He was always deserving of the highest regard, and better than he ever got. He departed the game as few have, moving to Europe and resisting boxing’s tradition of endless comebacks, and it left him underappreciated until the end.
Hagler, along with Leonard, Hearns and Durán — the “Four Kings,” they were called — led the outstanding pack of fighters in the 1980s who made it the last great decade for the fight game. He fought 67 times, won 62, including 52 by knockout, often with his formidable left, his dominant hand. He avenged two of his three losses and corrected both draws, all but one of which occurred in the first six years of his 14-year career — and all heavily disputed.
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He was never knocked out. Few of even the greatest boxers are so unscathed. And let me correct the record: Hagler was never really knocked down, either. Almost no boxer can say that.
But in the first few seconds of a match against Juan Roldán in March 1984, Hagler ducked a left hand that grazed the back of his shaved noggin. Hagler’s left foot slid backward along the canvas, and down he went. It was a slip that was wrongly ruled a knockdown. Two rounds later, clearly perturbed, Hagler sent Roldán sprawling into the ropes with a left uppercut. By the 10th round, Roldán’s right eye was swollen shut and he surrendered.
Few could withstand Hagler’s prodding power. It was most on display in 1985, when he was the victor of what became the most furious three-round championship fight. That night he and Hearns traded 329 punches, including 190 landed, before referee Richard Steele stopped it after just eight minutes when Hagler dropped Hearns and Hearns got up too wobbly to continue.
Their first round, when they threw 165 punches, of which they landed 106, was considered immediately the greatest opening round ever. Their fight, no matter its brevity, was named Fight of the Year.
Leonard was ringside that night outdoors at Las Vegas’s Caesars Palace as an HBO commentator. He served the same role at subsequent Hagler fights, including in March 1986, when Hagler met John Mugabi, who was 25-0, all wins by knockout. Hagler couldn’t make the original date for the fight because he was nursing a back injury. When they finally touched gloves, it took Hagler a while to round into his dominant style that eventually overwhelmed opponents. Hagler finally stopped the upstart in the 11th.
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Leonard was said to tell bystanders that night that he thought he could beat this version of Hagler. Once back in Maryland, Leonard told WDVM-TV that he wanted to fight Hagler despite having retired for a second time since 1982.
Hagler took Leonard’s challenge and the two met the following year, back at Caesars Palace. They split a $23 million purse, with Hagler getting $12 million.
Hagler was the favorite, and the prediction seemed right to me. Hagler was bigger, stronger and still more powerful. He hadn’t been idle. He was always all business, as they liked to say around the ring. Leonard didn’t dare punch with Hagler. He had been buckled by a sparring partner I knew, Quincy Taylor from Dallas. And sticking and moving, Leonard’s forte, didn’t seem a style that could win a title bout against a middleweight who had reigned as undisputed for seven years, the second-longest such grip on the middleweight title in the century.
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But three rounds in, Leonard was being Leonard and winning the judges’ cards. Hagler couldn’t find his range, couldn’t catch up to Leonard. Not until the fifth did Hagler catch Leonard hard. He did so again in the seventh and crowded Leonard on the ropes. The final rounds were mostly Leonard’s flurries vs. Hagler’s power. And when the scorecards were read, Leonard won two and Hagler one. It was as disputed of an outcome then as Hagler-Hearns was a celebrated slugfest.
Hagler said he was robbed and added that he would never fight again. We had heard Leonard say he was done twice only to come back. Muhammad Ali quit and returned. Joe Louis. Jim Jeffries. It was little more than chatter — until Hagler really didn’t return.
When Hagler’s death was announced, he had been a man of his word. He moved to Italy (not long after his first wife, Bertha, filed abuse charges against him). He acted in a few movies there. The closest he got back to the ring was as a commentator on a British boxing broadcast.
A boxer can never leave the fight game too soon. One punch, one round, one bout, one career is always one too many. It is our most brutal of sports.
But unlike Leonard, Hearns, Durán and the other stars who survived that era, Hagler removed himself from our cognizance — and took his greatness with him.
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