Hit Man - Brian Hughes [18]
“How many?” he asked.
“How many what?” said Weston.
“Fingers.”
“Howie, I can’t even see your hand.”
The ringside doctor insisted that the fight be stopped and Albert concurred, saying he wasn’t prepared to let his fighter suffer possible serious injury. Weston was diagnosed as suffering a detached retina.
Weston’s injury meant he would never box again. The New Yorker was bitter about this decision, claiming he had been thumbed in his right eye, albeit accidentally, even as his left eye was swelling shut. “I think the Good Lord wants Thomas Hearns to win the world championship and it was He who took my vision away for a moment,” he said. “Tommy Hearns is nothing. He is not in the same punching bracket as Pipino Cuevas.”
The bout had raised the first serious question marks about Hearns. Did he have the stamina? Did he have a Plan B when his opponent failed to fall over early? Then there were the unavoidable, and not always flattering, comparisons with the other rising star of the division: On the same night Hearns scored his nineteenth straight win, Ray Leonard had made it twenty-two wins in a row against rugged Mexican middleweight Marcos Geraldo in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And the Sugarman was already lined up for a title fight, against Benitez in November. He had beaten Hearns to the punch. But in June, Hearns made the cover of Boxing Illustrated, under the mischievous headline “Sweeter Than ‘Sugar.’” A rivalry was building.
Emanuel Steward refused to ease up on Hearns’s education process, and five weeks after the Weston fight he faced another solid opponent. Bruce Curry, from Marlin, Texas, was the reigning North American Boxing Federation light-welterweight champion. The older brother of Don Curry, who would achieve boxing fame in the 1980s, he had enjoyed an impressive amateur career, winning four Fort Worth Golden Gloves championships, two Golden Gloves State titles, winning the Western Olympic Trials at light-welterweight and coming runner-up to Ray Leonard in the 1976 Olympic boxing trials. Since turning professional he had fought twenty-four times and had stopped the well-regarded Monroe Brooks to win the NABF title. His most famous contest had been a ten-rounder against Puerto Rican wonder boy Wilfred Benitez: Curry had lost a split decision but had knocked down the normally untouchable Benitez three times. He had also beaten England’s capable Clinton McKenzie and was certainly no pushover.
In an action-packed battle, Hearns suffered a cut over his left eye but had too much power and too many ideas for Curry, beating him comprehensively in three rounds. The finish was reminiscent of a young Ray Robinson, with Hearns lashing in a frightening barrage of hooks to leave his opponent semi-conscious on the canvas. The victory would look even better after Curry went on to win the WBC light-welterweight championship four years later. “He butted me,” said Hearns afterwards, “and when I felt blood running down my face I knew it was do-or-die, and I did.”
HEARNS WAS IN demand. His victories were publicised across America and the powerful promotional organizations wanted him to appear on their tournaments. The success he had achieved was all the more creditable because Hearns had not started his career with a big build-up or an Olympic medal, like Sugar Ray Leonard or Howard Davis. He did not possess their natural charm or charisma either. Hearns was only too happy to put a great deal of his success down to Emanuel Steward. Although Steward was also new to the professional ranks, he had studied the boxing business and done a magnificent job in guiding Hearns to top ten contender status without the power of Don King or Bob Arum. King, for one, would later go through his patented turn-your-head routine by trying to woo Hearns’s mother Lois with promises of limousines, hotel suites and mink coats, in an attempt to sign the boxer away from