TO A STANDSTILL
Caesars Palace, with few believing Mugabi was ready to meet this challenge. Mugabi was not one of them. “He is old,” he said with a look of utter disrespect several days before the fight. “Boxing is [about] exchanging hands. He got two hands. I got two hands. What is he going to do to me with his hands? “I’ll hit him in the belly because his kidneys are old. His brain is full of punches. When he feels my power, his brains will bust out! I don’t run. I’m just there to fight. “The rule is elimination. That is what the ring is all about. I want Marvin Hagler’s championship belt. He doesn’t want to give it to me. I am going to have to take it from him. We destroy each other, and then there is a winner.” To be fair, Mugabi’s legendary manager, Mickey Duff, was not quite so fervent in believing his fighter would be that winner. Duff knew Hagler was in for a more difficult night than he might be expecting, but he remained a realist. “[Mugabi is] the best pound-for-pound puncher I’ve been involved with,” claimed Duff, who had by then been in boxing’s dark trade for 36 years and counting. “He may be the best puncher I’ve ever seen. “For John to be effective, he has to hit Hagler. Everyone has hit Hagler. John hasn’t fought too many Marvin Haglers, but my guy knows he only has to hit Hagler with a combination of three or four punches. If he does, there’s no way he ain’t gonna rock Hagler. “I would have to be naive to say John is a cinch Monday night, but I have no doubt he is the toughest opponent Marvin Hagler has fought to date. He’s the first opponent who will not be one percent intimidated by Hagler.” Duff would prove to be prescient on all points. Mugabi was not the least bit intimidated by Hagler’s presence across the ring. In fact, attacking with his characteristically wild hooks, Mugabi won the first round in part because Hagler unwisely chose to fight him from an orthodox stance rather than his usual southpaw style. Hagler quickly switched back to a left-handed stance in Round 2 and began the process of breaking Mugabi down by slamming a hard right jab into his face like a jackhammer. By fight’s end, he would do it 186 times, controlling the terms of engagement with it initially and gradually using it to get inside Mugabi’s powerful hooks to deliver the kind of telling blows that eventually can convince you this is not your night. Mugabi was a hard man to convince, however. He did his own damage, especially in the first half of the fight, although he was rocked and hurt in Round 6 in a preview of things to come. The only thing that appeared to save Mugabi was the odd intervention of referee Mills Lane. That round, Hagler
showed the cost. Yet nothing could convince him to back up. Nothing could stop his relentless defense of a title he believed was his and his alone. Not even a Beast could do that, and so, after having lost the previous two rounds on the scorecards of two of the three judges, Hagler lashed out one final time. He struck Mugabi with two powerful rights two minutes into Round 11 that seemed to daze him. Then landed two more, the first knocking Mugabi back, and the second sending him slumping to the floor. Mugabi had weathered 398 punches from Marvelous Marvin Hagler, according to CompuBox, as the cost of attempting to win a championship. Instead, he’d become Hagler’s 12th consecutive victim since first winning the middleweight title six years earlier. After those final two crushing rights, Mugabi, exhausted, struggled to prop himself up in a sitting position, one hand resting on the ropes as Lane counted him out at 1:29 of the round. Only Mugabi’s body had risen that far. His mind was still down. “I never saw either right,” Mugabi admitted later. “He was swinging around [from right- handed to left-handed]. He came round a different way. I tried my best to take Marvin Hagler. He is a great champion.” Almost in disbelief, Mugabi’s loyal trainer skittered along the ring apron with a wet sponge in his hand. What he really needed was a life preserver, but it was too late to employ either to any good end. It had been an unexpectedly hellish night at work for Hagler, but when all was said and done, he had left another man beaten into submission. As Lane moved in to finish his count, Mugabi stared into space, simply too exhausted to do anything else. His title quest ended, John “The Beast” Mugabi would be leaving Las Vegas like most of its visitors: He’d lost his bet and had taken a beating. Hagler, meanwhile, smiled through bloody lips with his right eye nearly shut as tightly as a venetian blind. He would talk of retirement, not of Thomas Hearns that night. And he would speak about Mugabi far differently than he had the day before. “My whole body is swollen,’’ Hagler joked. “I got caught with a lot of shots, but I had to take them to get to him. He had a great strategy. It’s very tough to knock the guy out when he fights with the strategy this guy used. “I went after him early, but I had to retreat a little bit and wear him down. He was counterpunching, so I had to change my style. I had to be patient.” Marvin Hagler had taken a beating like never before, but he had also proven something once again. He’d proven he was indeed still Marvelous … and still the undisputed middleweight champion of the world.
Despite Hagler’s dominance, the damage Mugabi inflicted on the champ was plain for all to see.
launched 95 punches in Mugabi’s direction and landed 59, a connect rate of 62%. That would be a winning total against most men, but The Beast was not most men. Still, he was clearly hurt when Lane jumped in to warn Hagler about low blows in the middle of a four-punch combination that had Mugabi reeling. The worst consequence for Hagler was that Lane’s intervention allowed the retreating Mugabi time to recover. The next round, he would deduct a point from Hagler for a similar infraction. Mugabi won Round 9 on all three judges’ cards and Round 10 on two of three. Far more significantly, by then he had all but closed Hagler’s right eye and had blood flowing from Hagler’s nose. The champion led on all three cards when the bell rang for the 11th round, but he had paid a high price, as promised by Mugabi and Duff, to get inside Mugabi’s wildly unorthodox wide hooks and tear at him from close quarters. Having never ventured into the places Hagler was now taking him, Mugabi had begun to tire. His will remained, but his skills had begun to diminish from the lashing Hagler was
putting on him. Between rounds 10 and 11, Mugabi leaned back against the ring post in his corner like a tired factory worker after a double shift. His chest heaved and his lips hung open to allow in more oxygen, as Duff, Mugabi’s trainer George Francis and the priest who had baptized him into the Catholic Church a few weeks earlier all exhorted him to fight on. “Do it for the children, John!” Duff hollered at him. “Do it for the children!” But the challenger was beginning to feel the collective weight of all the punches he’d endured to get to this point. As Mugabi slowed down, Hagler moved ever closer, like a rattlesnake ready to strike, though he was paying a high price for this, higher even than Hearns had extracted, and his swollen face
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