Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [138]
A southpaw who could adroitly switch to conventional style, Hagler paid his professional dues. He won his first seventeen, fourteen inside the distance, with a victory over Olympic gold medalist Sugar Ray Seales establishing him as a potential contender. The Petronellis showed tough love for their young prospect, refusing to take the easy route of set-up fighters as early opponents. A steady diet of feared Philadelphia middleweights, then toughest around, didn’t shrink Hagler’s star: wars with the likes of Bobby “Boogaloo” Watts, Willie “The Worm” Monroe, Eugene “Cyclone” Hart and “Bad” Bennie Briscoe only enhanced his reputation. He would avenge his only two losses by stopping Watts and Monroe.
Hagler, who soon took to calling himself “Marvelous Marvin,” won the WBC and WBA middleweight belts from Alan Minter in September 1980 on a riotous night in London. He took out IBF champ Wilfred Scypion three years later to reign undisputed. No challenger came close to beating him in seven defenses. Indeed, with no worthy challenger to truly test him, against whom to confirm his greatness, people began to question Hagler’s greatness and criticize his style because he was so much better than anyone else. Yet, if he didn’t confirm that greatness on every occasion with brutality and precision, the people would slowly yank him from the pedestal. Perhaps he was getting bored. Since those early setbacks to Watts and Monroe, draws to Sugar Ray Seales and Vito Antuofermo were the only other blemishes on his record. While Duran ranked with the best lightweights ever, Hagler was one of the greatest middleweights to grace the sport. He could outbox the best boxers, outpunch the hardest punchers, trained obsessively and had a chin of iron. He treated his body like a temple while Duran rarely scoffed at the extra buffet trip. Would it even be a fair fight?
Yet in the ring after his defeat of Davey Moore, it must have become evident to Duran that Hagler was not much bigger than he was. Though he had a five-inch longer reach and was three years younger, he stood only five feet nine. Conversely, while there was nothing about Roberto Duran that should have concerned Hagler, something did. It might have been the history of violence and comebacks, or the effrontery of the man, Duran’s air of unpredictability and danger. It might have been the mystique, the eyes, whatever, but Duran did something to Hagler that nobody thought he could do in or out of the ring. People wondered what a stubby 160-pounder who started the profession at 118-pounds was going to do to a powerful middleweight whose resume consisted of lopsided victories in a division devoid of top-flight contenders.
While Duran was loud, bodacious in his movements, tactless in his mannerisms, Hagler was the silent stalker, content to shuffle, move, jab, all the while taking a piece of his opponent with each round. His style was tactical, exact. No one left a Hagler fight dazzled by his footwork or even his one-punch power, but they marveled at his toughness, technique and generalship. Hagler fought to win, not to impress, and that didn’t always appease fight fans. Former Duran trainers Brown and Arcel knew his capabilities, and either out of a respect for Roberto’s ring genius or a belief that Hagler was overrated, both trainers gave the Panamanian an edge.
Duran was his first truly great opponent. People would remember this, he thought, the day he took down the legend and shoved him so far into retirement that they would only let him back for a Hall of Fame induction. To increase the incentive, Duran was going for records this time around. If he defeated Hagler, he would be the first boxer to win four titles in different weight classes.
Duran’s entourage, with a few new faces including training physician Dr Robert Paladino, arrived in Palm Springs, California, on November 1. While training for the bout, Duran found himself in the sights of a famous Hollywood sex symbol, who came to his training session and would sit ringside