The Big Fight (30 page)

What I took away most from his press conference, however, was what Hagler did
not
say. He did not say he was retiring, not yet anyway. I still felt confident that he'd accept the challenge. Try turning down $10 million. It's not easy. Believe me, I know. I also knew instinctively what others close to me did not know, that Hagler would never forgive himself if he let the opportunity pass. No matter how justifiable his reasons for quitting might have been, he'd be accused until the day he died of ducking me, and for a fighter there is no worse shame, and that includes losing.

Still, the weeks went by with no further word from the Mysterious One. Maybe Bertha Hagler would succeed where Juanita Leonard never could.

Finally, on August 18, three and a half months after I did the interview with J. B. Hagler, through a spokesman at Top Rank, the Las Vegas–based fight promotion firm, made his decision known: He was in.

I was overjoyed, although there was still the matter of the finances to work out, and with Bob Arum, the head of Top Rank and promoter of every Hagler title defense, doing the bidding, the negotiations were bound to be contentious. It was no secret that Mike Trainer and Bob Arum did not always see eye to eye. Hagler's decision also made me anxious. I realized there would be no going back. It was one thing to talk trash in the newspapers. I was a fighter and that's what fighters did. That's how we got by in the streets. But if you talk trash in the streets and get your ass kicked, no one finds out and you often get a chance to redeem yourself. Now the whole world would find out and I'd have to live with the outcome forever, and I still wasn't sure if I could pull it off.

There was only one way to find out, and it wasn't my body that needed the most work. It was my mind. My mind let me down in the preparation for Kevin Howard, and that was why I was knocked down for the first time in my career. My mind needed to be where it had been for the second Duran fight and the Hearns battle, where the only thing that mattered in my life was winning. Once I got there,
if
I got there, nothing could stop me.

As I kept working, so did Mike Trainer and Bob Arum. Their task was just as daunting.

Dividing the pot of gold to each party's satisfaction and ironing out the other issues were not going to happen overnight. It was not until late October, after two months of spirited negotiations, that the two sides reached an agreement. Hagler, the champion, was guaranteed $11.75 million while I was to take home at least $11 million. Another key element of the deal was convincing Hagler to accept twelve rounds instead of the standard fifteen for a championship fight. Hagler wanted fifteen. The extra three rounds were crucial when he rallied to secure the decision over Duran in 1983. Yet Mike shrewdly made Hagler's people believe it was a deal breaker when it never was. I was willing to go fifteen rounds if necessary, though given my time away from the ring, the less energy I spent, physically and mentally, the better.

The fight was set for April 6 at Caesars. I couldn't have been more satisfied. Caesars was where I won my first title, against Benitez, and where I would now win my last.

April was a long way off and I was grateful. When I issued the challenge to Hagler, I was hoping to get the fight in before the end of the year. Understanding the level of commitment it would require, I didn't know how long I would be able to maintain it. But as the months dragged on, I began to see the advantages of any delays. In addition to the extra work I could get in, which I needed, the later the fight was staged, the more it would render insignificant that I had been away from the ring for so long. By April, I would be fighting for the first time in thirty-five months, while more than a year would have passed since Hagler's last bout vs. Mugabi. To me, there would be little difference in the degree of rust. The layoff also meant I had absorbed far fewer blows than Hagler in recent years, and there are only so many hits a fighter can take in his career.

On November 3, Hagler and I met in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria in New York for the press conference formally announcing the fight. The Waldorf was where Duran first got inside my head before the disaster in Montreal. Six years later, a heck of a lot brighter, I had my opportunity to do the same to Hagler.

During my opening remarks, I thanked the champ for giving me a shot and walked from the podium to his seat at the right side of the head table to shake his hand. He didn't turn around. I walked back to the podium and delivered my next line with perfect comedic timing.

“Apparently, he has his fight face on,” I said.

A few people chuckled but Hagler stared straight ahead as if I weren't there. That was fine with me. He'd see me soon enough.

From that day forward, everything I said to the reporters over the following five months was designed to work on Hagler's psyche. I felt it was his weakest part. I was measuring him the same way I measured fighters in the ring, looking for an opening and pouncing on it. I benefited enormously from the work I had done to prepare for the fights of his I covered on HBO. I also knew, from our talks at his house in Brockton and the restaurant in Bethesda, what motivated him and what scared him. For the press conference in Manhattan, for instance, I wore a jacket that had shoulder pads to create the illusion of being as cut and muscular as possible to show Hagler he wouldn't be able to overpower me. I'd come in at 158 or 159 pounds and look every ounce of it.

 

 

 

W
ith the deal official, I finished assembling Team Leonard, which included, as usual, Angelo, Janks, Ollie, Juice, Joe, my brothers, and about a dozen others. Also among us for the first time since 1980 was my ex-trainer, Dave Jacobs.

Jake and I hadn't had spoken for years. I'd never completely forgiven him for joining the Hearns camp. Nonetheless, sincerely believing the Hagler fight, win or lose, would be my last, I was determined to bring the entire cast together for one final, magical encore. I thought back to what it used to be like in the early days before the squabbling over money, and before my troubles with drugs and alcohol. I yearned for it to be that way one last time. Was I naïve? Maybe. To conquer Hagler, though, I needed more than a strategy to mess with his psyche. I needed to dig deeply, to be brave enough to look into my own soul and rediscover the joy of what inspired me to run five miles at five o'clock every morning and take a pounding from sparring partners who were out to make a name for themselves. I needed to be a fighter again. The best way was to have the people around who made me one in the first place.

Jake, assigned to manage the sparring partners, fit right in. I knew he would. After being on the outs for six years, he welcomed the chance for another ride. The rest of Team Leonard, no matter what their own misgivings might have been, were also serious from day one. Except Leonard himself.

A few months earlier, before the agreement was signed, I went to Miami for about a week to cover a fight for HBO. While I was there, I decided to get in a couple of workout sessions during my spare time. I also squeezed in something else on this trip—a woman. But when I appeared sluggish in the gym, Ollie let me have it. There was a time for fooling around with women. This wasn't it.

“Hagler will beat the shit out of you,” he said. “You've got to get your body in shape.”

I don't recall what I said but I was pissed. For three days, I wouldn't let Ollie ride in the limo with us to the gym, and I told Mike I wanted him off the team. Mike ignored me, and Ollie and I were soon speaking to each other again.

Mike, too, had moments when he questioned my commitment. At one stage, he had urged me to fight sparring partners without my headgear, and to let them use ten-ounce gloves. His point was that I needed to simulate as closely as possible the conditions of an actual fight. Mike believed Sugar Ray Leonard could beat Hagler but Ray Leonard couldn't.

Ollie and Mike were not alone. Even Juanita chimed in. I arrived at our home in Potomac from a workout one afternoon with contusions and bumps everywhere. The sparring partners had been roughing me up again.

“Ray, are you upset that you said yes to fighting Hagler?” she asked.

I became defensive right away. That's what I do.

“No, no, no,” I protested. “How can you ask me that?”

Juanita did not give up.

“Sweetheart, it's okay. Sometimes we say things we don't mean.”

Now I was really angry. Of course I meant what I said. I wanted Hagler. I wanted Hagler more than anything in the world.

After I settled down, however, I realized Juanita was right, that when I was honest with myself, admittedly a rare development, there were times I wished I could call the whole thing off. I was grateful that Juanita spoke up, and the same went for Mike and Ollie, especially Ollie. He did it at the risk of losing his job, and there were not too many members of my circle who would take that chance. The three helped me understand that if I did not get serious, Hagler would destroy me. Before very long, it was the sparring partners who left the gym with bumps and contusions. By the end of November, I had already sparred more than a hundred rounds.

With the fight still four months away, it made no sense to maintain the same pace. A fighter who overtrains is as likely to lose as a fighter who doesn't put the work in. Besides, there was other work to do, for Hagler and me. Now that the fight was made, we had to go out and sell it. The more fans we could put in the seats for the closed-circuit telecast, the more we each stood to gain. The bout was likely to generate more revenue than any boxing event in history.

Hagler and I launched a seven-week, twelve-city tour across the country. I embraced the opportunity to meet with reporters to talk about the fight. I even wrote down my speeches and went over them on the plane. The same couldn't be said of Hagler, who dreaded the gatherings and showed up late. I thought about saying something but decided it wasn't my place. If I were the champ, I certainly would not appreciate it if I were taken to task. Yet I could not remain silent. I took him off to the side in a hotel ballroom where no one could hear us.

“Marvin, they're paying us,” I said. “We're professionals, man. You can't walk in when you want. It's not cool.”

He stared at me for the longest time. Maybe we wouldn't have to wait until April to see who was the better man.

“I'm sorry, Ray,” he said.

I was ecstatic, but I didn't show it. I didn't want to tip him off. By apologizing, Hagler was giving me respect, and the more respect he showed, the more he'd be wary of me once we entered the ring. It was an important victory in the other fight I was waging, the one to get inside that bald head of his.

Too bad my lecture did little good. Hagler was late again, for an appearance he and I were scheduled to make with Bob Hope. He made Bob Hope wait! The president didn't make Bob Hope wait. In mid-December, the problem was finally solved. After six stops, Hagler said
no más
to the rest of the tour, skipping appearances in Detroit and Chicago. I could understand why. This was one contest in which he had no shot against me, and he knew it. I was outgoing, cracking jokes, while he couldn't wait for the ordeal to be over. In Chicago, not one to skip an opportunity, I took the stage without him, and for a brief time played both parts.

“Ray, what will your strategy be for the fight?”

“Well, Marvin, I'm glad you asked.”

The audience loved it. The only thing I couldn't do was shave my head.

Hagler's departure from the tour represented another triumph. If my mere presence made him uncomfortable in front of the reporters, imagine, I thought, how uncomfortable he will feel in front of 15,000-plus spectators at Caesars Palace. He was used to big fights but he was not used to fights
this
big, while I was—the two Duran duels and the encounter with Tommy. I felt confident that Hagler, for all his bravado, would have just as much trouble coping with the whole scene as I did in Montreal against Duran.

His journey to reach the top of the boxing world was quite impressive, to say the least. Hagler, the eldest of six, dropped out of high school in Newark, New Jersey, to help support his family. In 1969, two years after riots in the city left twenty-six people dead and caused more than $10 million in property damage, the Haglers moved to join relatives in Brockton, best known as the hometown of Rocky Marciano. Within a few years, he began to carve out his own place in history, winning the national amateur middleweight title in 1973 and going unbeaten in his first twenty-six professional fights before losing a controversial decision in January 1976 to Philly fighter Bobby “Boogaloo” Watts. Hagler lost again two months later to Willie “the Worm” Monroe, another Philadelphia product. The two setbacks only made him more determined, and he didn't lose again. The lone blemish was the 1979 draw in Vegas with Antuofermo, after which he captured his next sixteen fights, defending his middleweight crown twelve times.

Hagler received a lot of credit for his rise and, in time, a lot of money, although never enough of both in his opinion, and I was the person to blame. I made $40,000 in my pro debut; he made $50. I made $1 million against Benitez; on the undercard he made $40,000 vs. Antuofermo. I understood his frustration. I would have felt the same outrage if someone was making that much more than I was. But to resent me for the discrepancy—that I could not understand. I didn't steal the money. They gave it to me because I won the gold medal and the hearts of America, and because I made money for the boxing establishment by putting people in the seats. Hagler didn't compete in the Olympics and his fights didn't generate much attention until the mid-1980s. Furthermore, by the spring of 1987, Hagler was rich and famous, set for life, and I don't recall
him
volunteering to hand over any of his hard-earned cash to the fighters toiling for the small amounts he used to make.