Hit Man - Brian Hughes [101]
These depressing considerations have nothing to do with greatness or a lack thereof. Few of the greatest bowed out either not horizontal or thoroughly beaten. Fewer still have won their last fight. Fighters speak of winning their last fight, going out on a winning note. This happens so infrequently that one can say that it doesn’t happen.
In the final accounting, Hearns should be accorded one of the greatest fighters among a handful of great fighters of the first half of the 1980s – along with Larry Holmes, Hector Camacho, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Marvin Hagler. Roberto Duran, a great fighter for much of the 1970s, decreased in effectiveness in the 1980s due to additional poundage and a certain slackness in training regimen, though he was able to give Hagler a moneysworth fight.
While Hearns deserves inclusion in this group, he is exceeded in greatness by Leonard and Hagler because both stopped him, albeit after mighty struggles. Hearns went on to effectively defeat Leonard in 1989, but the final round in that encounter was a demonstration that, as they rocked each other, these were two boxers beyond their prime. While there were extenuating circumstances with Hearns losing to Leonard and Hagler via the stoppage route, he was stopped in both.
The great fighters share the asset of courage, and in this regard Hearns was unequalled. He never took a ten count, though he was put flat on his back by both Hagler and Iran Barkley. As Pat Putnam of Sports Illustrated once told me, “Hearns has balls the size of schoolroom world globes.” His chin, much deprecated by pundits and those jealous of his success, was very good, but not up to the level of Leonard or Hagler. Hagler was never knocked out or stopped and Leonard wasn’t stopped until his final two, ill-advised comeback fights.
Muhammad Ali was the greatest heavyweight champion since Joe Louis because he fought and beat ten world champions, some of whom were at their peaks when he fought them. Against this standard, therefore, Tommy Hearns was great, but no one would call him “The Greatest.”
Claude Abrams, editor of the long-established Boxing News:
Those gunbarrel eyes, as Thomas Hearns set his stare so meanly on his opponent, matched the explosiveness of his weaponry. He had arms and legs like a spider and those who entered his web did so at their own peril. Hearns was a master boxer as well as a chilling puncher. He was electrifying to watch, for so few boxers have ever hurled punches with such force and accuracy and great pace whilst always retaining an extraordinary measure of composure.
I grew up on Hearns. He thrilled as well as dazzled. There was always excitement in the air. He brought drama to the sport during the Eighties, a magnificent time for welterweights and middleweights. Of course, he lost the really important fights – at welterweight against Sugar Ray Leonard in 1981 and the middleweight to Marvin Hagler less than four years later.
The Leonard match, unification for the WBC and WBA belts, was a true boxer-puncher classic between two mighty champions, whereas the intense Hagler showdown was absolute war for three rounds, the likes of which I had never seen before or witnessed since. Although Hearns eventually convinced Leonard to fight him again, at super-middleweight, Tommy was denied victory despite flooring his great nemesis twice and settling for a draw. Morally, Hearns had won. Leonard fought him only because he was convinced, like many others,