Hit Man - Brian Hughes [22]
NINETEEN EIGHTY WAS intended to be Hearns’s coronation year. His ascension began in February, when he boxed “Fighting” Jim Richards, from Curacao. Details of Richards’ fight record were sketchy. He was reported as having only eight professional fights before taking on Hearns at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, and was expected to provide little threat, but there was no point in the Detroit camp taking chances with a title bout looming. Richards tried his best to stay away from Hearns but in the third he was forced to the ropes and was floored by a left hook. He got up only to be dropped again by two rights to the head, and the referee stopped it as he rose again and sagged into the ropes.
In his next bout, for the vacant United States Boxing Association welterweight title, Hearns faced a much sterner test. His opponent, Angel Espada, was the former WBA welterweight champion. The Puerto Rican’s record was formidable. He had won the vacant WBA crown in a fifteen-round battle against Clyde Gray, a former Hearns victim, and had defended it against Johnny Gant before beating another mutual foe, Alfonso Hayman, despatching him more quickly than Hearns had managed by an eight-round knockout. When then pitted against the dynamic left-hooker Pipino Cuevas, he finally met his match and had to be pulled out of the fight in the twelfth round with a broken jaw. He had a swiftly arranged rematch against Cuevas to regain his title but was stopped again, this time inside ten rounds.
It was just four months after this latest loss that he agreed to box Hearns in the Joe Louis Arena, Detroit. Despite his defeats at the hands of Cuevas, the media acknowledged that Espada was still a force to be reckoned with. When he faced the Hit Man, however, he was made to look a shadow of a once-great fighter. Hearns gave a consummate display of controlled aggression in a bout which lasted for just four rounds before the referee was obliged to step in and halt the one-way traffic.
Hearns remained active by taking on Santiago Valdez in the Caesars Palace Sports Pavilion twenty-nine days later. Valdez, from Phoenix, had a decent pedigree of fourteen victories in nineteen contests, including a knockout over Hearns’s stablemate, Danny “Mad Dog” Paul. There was a hint of vengeance in the air as Hearns flew out of his corner at the opening bell and hammered Valdez unmercifully until the referee Joey Curtis stopped the slaughter. In a ringside interview, Hearns fired a salvo to any watching belt holders. “I don’t think there’s anybody who can stay with me because of my punching power,” he said. “And that includes Sugar Ray Leonard, Pipino Cuevas, Roberto Duran or Wilfred Benitez.”
In a final warm-up bout before meeting Cuevas, Steward was eager to ensure that his charge should meet a wily foe and decided to pitch him in against the experienced Nicaraguan Eddie Gazo, a former WBA light-middleweight champion. Gazo had won forty-two of his forty-nine fights and had fought in Japan and South Korea, where he had successfully defended his crown three times before losing it on a disputed points decision to Masashi Kudo. He had since enjoyed a five-fight unbeaten run. He never came close to making it six as Hearns demolished him with a thunderous first round knockout. Steward declared that it was now all systems go for the much awaited world welterweight championship clash between Hearns and Cuevas. Hearns trained at the Kronk before moving out a month before the fight to the isolation of a rural camp in Berrien Springs, a hundred miles from Detroit. After putting in his work, there was horse riding and fishing, minibiking and card games to help him relax and take his mind off the daily grind. By the time he weighed in, at 10st 6½ lbs, the rake-thin