BOOK REVIEW: BLOOD & HATE VIVID STORYTELLING SHINES IN A NEW BIOGRAPHY ABOUT MIDDLEWEIGHT LEGEND MARVELOUS MARVIN HAGLER By Thomas Gerbasi
M y favorite story in Dave Wedge’s new book on Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Blood & Hate , has nothing to do with the late, great middleweight champion. Vinnie Vecchione, best known as the manager and trainer of one-time Mike Tyson foe Peter McNeeley, had arranged for one of his boxers to fight unbeaten Ennio Cometti in Italy in January 1974. Vecchione’s fighter wasn’t going to make it, and the promoter wasn’t going to call the fight off. So Vecchione, who’d never had a pro fight, took another one of his boxer’s ID cards, flew to Italy and fought Cornetti as Paul Poirier, getting stopped in the process for $600. My point? These are the kinds of stories that boxing used to be full of. There were characters everywhere, both in and out of the ring, and it was a big reason why the sport was on the front page and not buried next to the classifieds in the newspaper, if there are even newspapers covering boxing these days. Blood & Hate captures these stories. But Hagler is obviously the star of the show, and while the rest of the Four Kings (Roberto Duran, Thomas Hearns and Sugar Ray Leonard) have had their stories told to the masses, this is the one of the rare times we get to see Hagler’s tale fleshed out. And the bald-headed terror of the 160-pound division becomes human, not just a machine taking out challenger after challenger. “This book has been a labor of love for me,” said Wedge. “It’s something
Like Mark Kriegel’s recent biography on Mike Tyson, Blood & Hate doesn’t tell the entire story of Hagler’s life but features the period from his formative years in New Jersey up until the night he defeated Alan Minter to win the middleweight title in 1980. Just as Baddest Man ends with Tyson’s win over Michael Spinks, ending Blood & Hate at the Minter fight feels right, as it captures a moment in time that encapsulated Hagler’s life to that point. He beat Minter like he stole something that September night in Wembley Arena, finally getting the world title he fought so hard to win. But he couldn’t enjoy it due to the madness that erupted after the fight, a disgraceful display of the racism that had followed him from his days growing up in Newark, New Jersey. Yet who was with him throughout, trying to shield him from the bottles flying into the ring, but the Petronelli brothers – Goody and Pat – who had been with him from the start of his boxing journey until the end. If you don’t know, Hagler was Black and the Petronellis were white, and their inseparable bond survived both the boxing business and the shaky race relations that surrounded them in Massachusetts.
I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I grew up in Brockton, I was a journalist for 20 years, and now I write books, and I just never really had the opportunity. And then after Marvin passed, here it is. And I know I could never tell his whole story, because it would be 800 pages, but this part of the story to me is the essence of who Marvin was and shows people the reason why he was the way he was, why he had that drive. And that’s why I wanted to do it. I think people all across the world need to know this story. It is such an inspirational, amazing story.”
Hagler, pictured behind manager-trainer Pat Petronelli, eventually received his due respect.
84 RINGMAGAZINE.COM
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