BERNSTEIN ON HAGLER VS. HEARNS
Few fighters who have ever stepped into a ring have had the toughness, dogged determination and will to win that Marvin Hagler had.
I was in such august company. I had announced Hagler’s middleweight title defense against Roberto Duran in 1983, but this championship fight seemed to occupy an even bigger place in the sports universe. It’s fitting that it came almost exactly at the midpoint of the 1980s, perhaps the best decade boxing has ever experienced. It seemed to validate the greatness that we thought we were seeing in the first half of the decade, and it was foreshadowing many great fights still to come in that 10-year period. Several days before the fight, I was interviewing Hagler for the telecast, which was done inside a ring. As Marvin and I were walking up the steps, I inadvertently stepped on the back of his heel and we both lost our balance and had to hang on for dear life so we didn’t fall off the stairs. While this was happening (and nervous folks were running to help us), all I could think of was that I could ruin the biggest middleweight fight in many years – and my career as well – in one blink of an eye. Luckily, we did not go down in a heap and he did not get injured. With his usual sardonic sense of humor, Marvin looked at me after this incident and said, “Did Tommy put you up to that?” We both laughed, but under my laugh was a giant sigh of relief. Back in those days, you couldn’t reach the world in one livestreamed press conference as you do now. You had to do it the old-fashioned way, with a press tour. For those of you under 30, please google that phrase. This fight had one of the longest and most extensive press tours of any big fight of the era. Both Hagler and Hearns had to be around each other constantly in city after city and repeat their predictions of victory and any thoughts about their opponent over and over again in close proximity to each other. Even though both men always had respect for each other, this process made them testy and more than a little annoyed with their opponent. It all helped add extra tension heading into the match. Later, Hagler famously said, “I was just so sick of seeing Tommy that I wanted to rip his head off.” And we are
all pretty sure that Tommy Hearns felt the same way. It was a beautiful spring evening in the desert the night of the fight. The outdoor venue in the Caesars Palace parking lot was filled with spectators who actually seemed a little subdued to me in the minutes leading up to the fight – even during the walk-ins of the fighters. I realized later it was hardly indifference; it was tension – a kind of anticipation that made people less vocal and more focused on their thoughts of what was to come. After all, everyone in the boxing world, pundit or fan, expected excitement in the fight. What we all expected and what we got were two different things. Not even the most optimistic of observers could have anticipated that we were all about to witness one of the greatest rounds of boxing ever fought. One book written about this fight devoted an entire chapter to the first round alone. That round was frenetic, exciting, brutal and also skillful. It began with Hagler, normally not a super-quick starter, pressing the pace. In the process, however, he walked into one of Hearns’ signature monstrous right hands. This produced the first of several fascinating subplots of the fight. The punch stunned Hagler. Even though in my post-fight interview he said the punch didn’t really hurt him, years later he admitted in a private moment with me that it did stun him – though he was never in danger of going down. This, however, was not the important subplot. This was: We learned after the fight that with that punch, Hearns had broken his right hand – something he shared with trainer Emanuel Steward
after the round, but it was undetected by the mic in the corner. So, only seconds into this major fight, Hearns had proven his power could affect the iron-chinned Hagler, but he lost one of the weapons necessary to do it. Remarkably, with a damaged right hand, Hearns was still able to throw the punch and land it enough to conceal the weakness. In fact, CompuBox numbers show he threw 83 punches in the first round and landed 56 (67% of his punches). Hagler was not far behind with 50 punches landed of 82 thrown (a 61% connect rate). When a boxer gets anywhere near 50% in total punches landed, it is considered a great performance, so these numbers were off the chart. In addition, the two combined to land 95 power shots (defined as everything other than jabs) in the round. That STILL remains the record for a single round in a middleweight fight. I am not given to hyperbole when I announce fights, so words like “best” and “greatest” are not used much by me. At the end of this round, I was moved to call it “perhaps one of the best in middleweight history.” Honestly, it just spilled out of my mouth with no forethought. I Iiterally could not help but say it. The crowd that had seemed subdued only minutes before was now as frenzied and loud as any I’ve ever heard. Here is where we get into fact vs. perception. Most folks (including me) have at some point had the perception that once that first round was over, Tommy was not that competitive in the rest of the fight. This narrative is also fueled by the information we later got about the broken right hand. But that
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