Hit Man - Brian Hughes [17]
Of his injured hand, Hearns said, “It’s happened a few times before, a couple of times in the amateurs and once since turning pro. But never this bad. I was thinking about my knockout streak going into the last round but I wasn’t about to break my hand going for it.”
JUST THIRTY-THREE days later, Hearns and Steward travelled to Las Vegas to prepare for a twelve-rounder against the classy New York boxer Harold Weston, who had reconsidered the $40,000 offer he had been made earlier in the year. Their 20 May fight, in the Dunes Hotel, was advertised in neon lights on the Strip. Hearns accepted this honour in laconic manner. Asked if he was excited at seeing his name in lights on the huge marquees outside the hotel, he told reporters, “It makes no difference to me. I’m here to fight.”
He seemed more animated when he was taken to the home of Joe Louis, the former all-time-great heavyweight champion. Louis had been reared in the same Detroit neighbourhood as Thomas forty-five years earlier and, though Hearns was much too young to have seen him box, he often listened to the wheelchair-bound champion reminisce. When he was asked about his thoughts, Hearns said, “Louis wasn’t really my hero but I look up to him for what he has achieved throughout his life.”
The Weston bout, transmitted live by NBC, was dubbed as Hearns’s baptism of fire, as Weston was perceived as a considerable step up in class from his previous opponents. He was coming off a fifteen-round points loss to Wilfred Benitez, the WBC welterweight champion, with whom he had previously fought a hotly disputed draw. He had also challenged WBC champ Pipino Cuevas but had been stopped in round nine after suffering a broken jaw. Weston was more of a boxer than a puncher but he had stopped the concrete-jawed middleweight Vito Antuofermo with a cut eye. Apart from his considerable boxing talent, twenty-seven-year-old Weston was a qualified accountant and a fashion model.
The New Yorker was dismissive about his opponent. “I saw Hearns in Philadelphia against a ham-and-egg fighter called Alfonso Hayman and I walked out after five rounds suffering from boredom,” he said, provocatively. “Hearns will try and knock me out, but after he finds out who I am, then his whole plan will have to change. He will then get discouraged when there is nothing he will be able to do to counter me. There will be no alternative. I will beat him and give him a lesson in boxing.”
The boxing gods, however, were with the younger man. On the morning of the fight, Hearns bet $15 on a keno card at the Dunes and won $1,900. And when he stepped into the ring, he soon made Weston’s boasts look hollow. Instead of looking straight for the knockout, he defied Weston’s predictions by boxing behind his left jab. Then, towards the end of round one, he caught Weston with his trademark right and followed up with a wicked barrage of punches to have his man in trouble on the ropes. Weston tried slipping and countering but was repeatedly beaten to the punch and his left eyebrow began to puff up. Another inside-the-distance win seemed imminent.
But Weston could take a punch, and he had heart as well as skill. By the middle rounds he was getting through with hooks to the body and even making the six-inch taller Hearns give ground. Hearns seemed to be suffering in the desert heat and things were getting interesting. But at the end of six absorbing