The Big Fight (31 page)

Hagler, who owned the WBC and WBA middleweight crowns, was upset that the WBA did not approve of me as an opponent and opted not to sanction the bout. I didn't care. I wasn't planning to stick around anyway. I was coming back for one fight, and the only reward I craved was the satisfaction of victory.

 

 

 

I
n late January, we established camp in Hilton Head, South Carolina. It was cold and I despised cold weather, but training in Maryland was out of the question. I needed a quiet spot where there would be few distractions. Another important decision we later made was to place Juanita in charge. A camp is no different from a family, with people's needs often conflicting, and despite her reservations about me fighting again, no one would look out for my welfare more than my wife. I could not afford a repeat of Montreal.

With my mind on track, my body was next. I needed to build a new one. I would have to look the part for real. I couldn't wear shoulder pads into the ring.

Day by day, it started to form—in the arms, the thighs, the biceps, everywhere. I was becoming a legitimate middleweight. It was an odd feeling to see a different person in the mirror, yet the eyes were the same, hungry, angry, alive, and that's what mattered most.

In sparring sessions I worked with fighters who were ruthless, ready to attack, attack, and attack some more, just as Hagler would. They included Johnny Walker, who could hammer away with either hand, Robert “Boo Boo” Sawyer, and Dwayne “the Barbarian” Cooper, whose bald pate served as an appropriate target. Walker switched frequently from an orthodox to a southpaw stance, a common Hagler maneuver that required his opponents to make on-the-fly changes to cope effectively with directly opposite angles. No boxer at our level could go back and forth as seamlessly as Hagler could. He changed from one round to the next. He changed in the
middle
of a round. Each sparring partner also helped me get acquainted again with the sensation of my face getting pummeled. It was a tough enough adjustment when I came back in 1984 after a two-year break, let alone three years of boozing, snorting, and running in and out of countless bedrooms.

My strategy from the opening bell would be to disrupt Hagler's rhythm. Hagler reminded me of a truck going down a hill, building up speed and then running you over. He had a chin made of granite. In all his fights I saw in person or on film, I never saw him buckle, not once. I saw him get cut, but that only motivated Hagler to fight with more venom. Any suggestion might make a difference, however insignificant it appeared. Enter J. D. Brown to the rescue.

J.D., long over his disappointment about my retirement following the Kevin Howard fight after he and Kenny had launched their new promotion company, agreed to be a spy for us at Hagler's camp in Palm Springs, California. Spies in boxing had been around as long as punching bags, and with most sparring sessions open to the public, almost anyone could get in. For J.D. to get paid, he had to provide a picture of himself with Hagler. No problem. He dyed his hair gray, put on horn-rimmed glasses, and secured the photo and an autograph, to boot. For three solid days, J.D. watched Hagler work out. The majority of what J.D. put in his report was nothing I had not known before, but he did come up with one fascinating insight I'd use on fight night. He noticed that just before the bell would sound to begin every round, Hagler would go stand in the middle of the ring as if to declare:
This is my territory, pal. I dare you to try to take it away from me.
I decided that if I accomplished nothing else at Caesars Palace, I would reach the center of the ring before he did.

In late February, Angelo arrived in Hilton Head. Normally he didn't show up this early before a fight. Of course there was nothing normal about facing Marvin Hagler.

Angelo showed me the best angles to approach Hagler; because he wasn't a natural southpaw, I should work on avoiding his more deadly right hand. He also told me that because Hagler was stronger did not mean I couldn't push him around in a clinch. This was another way to break his rhythm, and the more frustrated he became, the more he would stray from his comfort zone.

By late March, when we left Hilton Head to spend the final week in Las Vegas, everything was coming together.

I was used to my new body, my hands and feet moving as smoothly as they did with the old one. I could not wait to disprove the critics who said the additional ten pounds would slow me down. I was nailing guys in the gym so convincingly that I was starting to believe the surest way to confuse Hagler was to do what neither he nor anyone would anticipate, and that was to fight him toe-to-toe. Given that he'd incurred a lot of scar tissue, I saw no reason why I couldn't open up old cuts. He cut easily, he told me over drinks that night at Jameson's. I didn't forget.

Was I out of my mind? Didn't I learn my lesson from fighting Duran that way in Montreal? Didn't I see what Hagler did to Tommy when he tried to slug it out with him? Apparently not.

Fortunately I woke up to reality. It occurred when I was sparring in Las Vegas a few days before the fight. Quincy Taylor, another southpaw we used, threw a left hand that rocked my socks off. I should have taken a knee. But no, not me. I was Sugar Ray. I didn't go down in the gym. I did the Ali thing, pretending that I wasn't hurt, and the audience fell for it. Quincy knew better, as did my boys. He took it easy, firing harmless shots to the body to let me recover. Quincy, who would become the middleweight champion in the mid-1990s, did not want to be known as the sparring partner who caused a delay in the Leonard-Hagler fight. Time was called and I was out of danger.

Still, the punch did damage—to the confidence of my team. I detected the change during the ride back to the hotel. No one said a word. I knew what they were thinking:
He's really gotten in over his head this time.
I had never been hit that hard this close to fight night.

I called Mike when I got back to my room. I was more determined than ever.

“These motherfuckers think I'm going to lose,” I said. “I'll show them. I'm not going to let Hagler touch me.”

The punch served another purpose as well. I reviewed the sequence on tape a few hours later and was relieved to see there were no glaring errors with my footwork or defense. Quincy simply caught me with a good shot when I got too careless, which can happen to anyone. Yet I could not overlook the obvious: What if Hagler did the same? Fighting toe-to-toe was now out of the question. I would do instead what Duran told me back in 1983: “You box him, you beat him.” Thank God for Quincy Taylor.

The boys were not the only ones lacking confidence in my chances of pulling off the upset. So were the boxing writers, many of whom were good friends. There were too many strikes against me: a three-year layoff, a higher weight class, an opponent who had not lost in eleven years. To them, the real Sugar Ray Leonard was last seen against Hearns in 1981, and would never be seen again. Some went as far as to suggest I might get seriously hurt, which could cripple the sport's credibility for years. Of the sixty-seven writers polled before the fight in one newspaper article, sixty chose Hagler, fifty-two by knockout. Of the seven who went with me, only two (Bart Ripp from the
Albuquerque Tribune
and Michael Katz of the
New York Daily News
) predicted that I would put Hagler away. The doubters included Larry Merchant, who saw Hagler winning via a ninthround KO.

Larry, however, was rooting for me, as were many of the writers. On the day before the fight, along with HBO's Ross Greenburg and Barry Tompkins, he watched my workout. Later after a brief conversation at the house I was renting, the three headed for the door. Larry abruptly turned around and approached me again while the other two hung back. He had one last thing to say:

“Make me a liar.”

 

 

 

A
pril 6 finally arrived.

After a restless night, with one trip after another to the bathroom mirror, I got up early, around seven. I can't think of a key fight—Aldama, Benitez, Duran I and II, Hearns—when I wasn't up early.

The day's first order of business was the traditional morning weigh-in at the Sports Pavilion in Caesars.

The weigh-in went unnoticed for decades, until 1964, when Ali pretended to be crazy during the one before his first title fight with Liston. From then on, with the help of television, fighters have used the stage for last-minute drama to pump up interest in the event. For my purposes, I went in with no game plan, but soon sensed another chance to get inside Hagler's head. Both he and I were asked to wait off to the side while the other stepped on the scales. I went first, Hagler patiently watching as I came in at 158 pounds. But when it was his turn to be weighed, I walked away. I was letting him know that while he was the champ, I wasn't going to give an inch. After the weigh-in, I went upstairs to my suite for the rest of the afternoon. I enjoyed my one meal of the day: chicken with tons of gravy and onions, vegetables, and corn bread.

More than a full year had gone by since I had decided to come out of retirement. A lot of people thought I was nuts and there were moments when I was one of them. I lost my focus on numerous occasions, and it showed in the gym and in my behavior. Each time, thankfully, there was someone to remind me who I used to be, and who I could be again if I put in the work, which I did. By the time we broke camp, I was ready. I didn't need the money, and I didn't need to punish my body. I had punished my body enough. I did need the challenge, and I got it, and now, in only a few hours, in a specially constructed outdoor stadium in the parking lot at Caesars, I'd find out if the work would pay off. The idea of fighting Hagler was brought up in 1981 and 1982, and again in 1984, and many experts believed that was when we should have fought, in our prime. None of that was important. We were fighting at last, and the whole world was about to tune in. They called it the “SuperFight” and that's what it was.

W
hen the bell rang for round one, I accomplished my first goal: I beat Hagler to the center of the ring. I felt like putting up a flag.

My next goal was to win the round. That was not as crucial in other matches, when the opponents were not as imposing and there would be fourteen rounds remaining. But this being a twelve-rounder and Hagler being who he was, likely to dictate the tempo at some juncture, I needed to steal as many of the early rounds as possible, in case the long layoff took its toll.

So far so good as I slid from side to side, keeping Hagler at bay as he pursued me from one end of the twenty-square-foot ring to another. Beginning in the summer of 1986, before I knew if there would be a fight, I ran five miles a day at Mount Motherfuck, building the endurance in my legs, and they weren't letting me down. Neither was my jab. Getting the first several out of the way got rid of the nerves, and after that, they were quick, effective. The objective was to land a series of combinations in each round, usually with a right-hand lead, and then dance out of his range.

“Stick and jab,” Ollie kept yelling. “Stick and jab.”

As the bell rang, when I was about to throw a left, Hagler flinched and covered up. I suddenly realized the fearless Hagler was as nervous as I was. He was mine.

Round two was very similar, Hagler stalking me as I maintained a safe distance, changing directions, keeping him off balance:
“You box him, you beat him.”
He was fighting orthodox instead of southpaw and I couldn't understand why. Did he really believe that he could outbox me? If he did, he would keep throwing rounds away, and with each round, each minute, I became more comfortable. Three years is a long time to be away from the ring, and it takes a while to remember where you are, who you are. Hagler switched to southpaw to start the third round. It made no difference as he continued to miss his target. In the fourth, just to irritate him, I threw a mini bolo punch, reminiscent of the one in round seven of the Duran rematch. The punch, which landed close to Hagler's groin, got a reaction from the crowd. I was getting under his skin.

“Fight like a man, bitch,” Hagler said. “Fight like a man.”

In the fifth, Hagler, who was about a 3½–1 favorite, turned into the Hagler everyone expected. He landed a solid combination late in the round, catching me with his best shot of the evening, a hard right uppercut that made my knees buckle. I was in trouble, trapped in the worst possible position, the ropes, and was fortunate that the bell rang.

“Don't lay on the ropes,” Angelo told me.

There was not the slightest trace of panic in Angelo's voice and demeanor, and if there had been, I might have panicked, too. When Jake, who did lose control, shouted, “Don't let him draw you into a punching match,” Angelo sternly told him, “Quiet, quiet,” and there was not another peep from Jake. The exchange between them summed up the differences in the two men and illustrated why I made the proper choice in hiring Angelo in the fall of 1976. Jake was the right man for the gym, for the hours and hours of tedious work it takes to remain sharp and fit. Angelo was the right man for the arena, for when the pressures—and almost every fight has them—demand a steady hand.