Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [137]
Meanwhile the inquest continued over referee Magana’s belated stoppage of the bout. Watching Moore drown at the Garden, it had been obvious that boxing was the one sport where a bad night could pluck years off a fighter’s shelf life. Moore’s armor was peeled off piece by piece. In nearly twenty-four boxing minutes, Davey Moore was stripped of the exuberant, cocksure nature. Those who witnessed the bout tried to make sense of it all.
“And then when they threw the towel, he stops the fight,” said Juan Carlos Tapia. “It was one of the most cowardly moments ever by a referee. He could have done a great loss to Davey Moore.” Writer Jack Newfield referred to Magana as a “voyeur of masochism” and noted that it was like “death entering the arena.”
“I watched it with dread,” said author Budd Schulberg. “There are nights like that that make you feel guilty about boxing. I think the commissions are very culpable. I don’t know if they check enough on the previous condition of a boxer. Thank God it doesn’t happen too often. It made me sick. It was one of those terrible nights that makes you nervous about boxing. It was a sensitive group around ringside and the more sensitive were increasingly apprehensive because there was a sense that the poor kid had no armor against Duran. And oh, he was relentless that night. You had an awful sense that something terrible was going to happen. I didn’t know if he was going to die but I knew it was the end of him.” Sports Illustrated writer William Nack summed up the referee’s performance when he declared, “Leave it to the WBA to hire a turkey to run a cockfight.”
In March 1984, Moore told a New York Times writer the true implication of what happened to him the night he ran into Roberto Duran: “Oh man, that fight broke my heart.”
17
Redemption
“Roberto’s story is like a religious story. The glory, the fall and the redemption.”
Luis Spada
THE SCENT OF millions followed Marvelous Marvin Hagler up into the ring moments after Roberto Duran had mugged Davey Moore in Madison Square Garden. The shaven-skulled middleweight king reached out and held up the hand of the new three-time champ as photographers boxed each other out for position. A contest between the two of them, which would once have seemed absurd, was now a serious proposition.
A month later, it was announced that the two champions would meet for Hagler’s middleweight crown in Las Vegas (initially it was announced for the Dunes casino-hotel outdoor arena but it would eventually take place at Caesar’s Palace). A crowd of 1,500 mostly Duran fans, turned up just for the press conference at the Felt Forum in New York. “It will be the biggest closed circuit fight in history,” declared Bob Arum. “I believe this is the greatest fight in our lifetime.” He suggested the boxers could earn as much as $10 million each from all possible revenue sources, though they were believed to have been guaranteed $5 million. Speaking through his interpreter, Duran said he would train even harder than for the Moore bout and Hagler would “go down for sure.”
The menacing middleweight champion was unmoved. “Two things are on my mind,” he glowered. “Destruct and destroy.” The pro-Duran crowd booed but few among them could help feeling uneasy. Hagler was the toughest proposition Duran had ever faced. “There’s a monster that comes out of me in the ring,” he once said. “I think it goes back to the days when I had nothing. They’re all trying to take something from me that I’ve worked long and hard for, years for.” He wasn’t about to let “them.”
Hagler grew up in New Jersey and moved to Brockton, Massachusetts, hometown of the legendary Rocky Marciano, when he was sixteen years old. Before turning pro in May 1973, he won the National A.A.U championship at 165 pounds. He was guided by the Petronellis: Guerino Petronelli had boxed (as Goodie Peters) and his brother and sidekick Tony developed fighters in a small Brockton gym. When Marvin