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By Root 911 0

deal struck in Santa Monica had included an agreement that Hearns would box on a MAPS tournament at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, against Mexico’s Jose Figueroa. The tournament was also a benefit night for the legendary Joe Louis, who was confined to a wheelchair after a stroke. Figueroa had a respectable record of thirty-one wins with only four losses. On a previous MAPS promotion, he had fought against the highly regarded Andy “The Hawk” Price, who was managed by the soul singer Marvin Gaye. Although Price was awarded the decision, it was unpopular and the crowd booed and threw chairs. Figueroa was seen as an opponent who would offer a stern test for any up-and-coming young fighter. Most significantly, however, he had been stopped by Pipino Cuevas in a recent fight and Hearns and Steward saw it as an opportunity to benchmark themselves against the champion, his imminent foe. Hearns knocked out the Mexican inside three rounds.

What no one knew was the source of Smith’s seeming endless supply of cash: embezzlement. Smith had charmed, bribed and cajoled two accomplices, Ben Lewis and Sammie Marshall, to help steal money from their employer, Wells Fargo, the nation’s eleventh largest bank. They did it by exploiting a flaw within the bank’s computerised systems. “Every bank that has branches in different places has to have some kind of system for allowing customers to walk into a branch that’s not theirs and draw money on the account,” explained Dean Allison, who prosecuted Smith for embezzlement. “Obviously, the bank has to have a way to keep track of the money that a customer takes out of Branch B, when the customers account is in Branch A. At Wells Fargo, that system was called the branch settlement system.” Each transaction would generate two halves of a ticket, one for the branch where the money was withdrawn, the other for the branch where the customer’s account was held. These two halves had to be entered into a computer and matched up within ten days, to balance the debit and credit on the same account. The flaw was that, if a corrupt employee charged both parts of the ticket at the same branch, money could flow out of the system without being flagged up.

In 1979, the first year of the fraud, Smith stole about $200,000. A year later, it was up to a staggering $15 million, the biggest fraud of its kind in US history up to that point. It was this stolen money that allowed MAPS to break into big-time boxing promotion.

THOMAS HEARNS’S NEXT next fight was held back home in Detroit, where Steward had picked a particularly tough opponent. Saensak Muangsurin, from Thailand, was a former two-time WBC light-welterweight champion. After an early and successful career in Muay Thai, he converted to boxing and won the world championship in only his third professional fight, a record. He made a number of successful defences but had lost his last two bouts and appeared to be on the slide. Nevertheless, he was still a difficult proposition, a rugged southpaw with an awkward style. Six thousand fans came along to watch Hearns celebrate his coming-of-age twenty-first birthday. Muangsurin’s tactics seemed to be to retreat to the ropes and lure Hearns onto counters, but the Detroit sensation simply hit too fast and too hard for him and he took a sustained beating. Referee Bobby Watson stopped the massacre in the third round as the game but dazed Thai, having already been dropped by a straight right, took a vicious pounding in his own corner.

In November, Hearns ventured to New Orleans, where he was matched against Mike Colbert, a fully-fledged middleweight. It was a genuine risk. Colbert, whose real name was Adolfo Akil, once had visions of becoming the middleweight champion, but fell to Marvin Hagler in a bout that was actually recognised in Massachusetts – though only Massachusetts – as for the world title. Losing to Hagler was no disgrace and Colbert had beaten a number of middles on the fringes of title contention. He would also be, physically, the biggest opponent Hearns had fought to date.

In an absorbing ten-rounder, Hearns