Hit Man - Brian Hughes [27]
From the opening bell, Hearns used Baez as target practice. The recent criticism of his punching power seemed to inject extra sting into his attacks. He used his long reach to outscore the brave Mexican and let his right hand go like a rocket with increasing frequency. Each time it landed, it shook Baez right down to his toes. Baez was simply unable to get close enough to land a reply.
In the second round, Hearns got up on his toes to dance. After a minute had elapsed, he caught his foe with a swift right cross, followed this with another peach of a right and a left hook for good measure, driving Baez back into the ropes. Surprisingly, Hearns stood back and didn’t follow through this attack. Instead, he retreated and invited Baez to reply. Hearns stayed on the ropes for nearly half a minute and used Baez’s flailing punches as an opportunity to practise honing his defence. He drove in an occasional left hook and a right cross whenever he wished to check his game challenger.
When the end came in the fourth round, it was brutal. Hearns came off his stool in earnest and immediately began brandishing his jab. Baez appeared distracted by this unexpected fury and the champion exploited his surprise by catching him with a straight right smash directly onto the unguarded chin. He followed up with a string of punches onto the groggy Baez, who was trapped in the corner. Hearns’s attack was relentless and he barely drew breath when continuing to blast away until the Japanese referee, Ken Murito, managed to pull him away. Baez, with a deep gash over his left eye, offered no protest but drunkenly slumped against the ropes, stunned and with legs shaking like jelly.
Leonard fulfilled his part of the bargain, impressively dismantling Kalule in nine rounds. The next morning, the press turned their attention to the now inevitable showdown between the two men. Leonard’s charisma put him at an immediate PR advantage. Respected sportswriter Joe Falls – who had memorably summed up Hearns’s latest victim with the words, “Pablo Baez, like Joan Baez, is non-violent” – reflected on the difference between the two rivals. “At 8 am, the morning after his fight with Kalule, right on schedule, Sugar Ray walked into the small conference room wearing a sailor’s cap and a smile as bright as the Texas morning sun,” he wrote. “He was eager to help all the writers conclude their various pieces and assure himself of the maximum publicity. When the reporters asked Steward, who had attended to represent his fighter, where Hearns was, we were informed that he was still asleep. This may seem unimportant but it was a major reason why Leonard could command eight million dollars and three million more than Hearns … Not only does Sugar Ray’s publicity man rush into the coffee shop and pull guys away from their scrambled eggs, he then stands at Leonard’s side and repeats all the questions so not a word was missed by anyone.”
This episode prompted other journalists to mount the bandwagon and contrast the Hearns camp with Leonard’s, who were far better organised. Falls later reflected that Hearns had been badly advised when he had posed for the cover of the December 1980 edition of Ring Magazine dressed as a member of Al Capone’s Purple Gang. “He was wearing a 1930s trilby, had his coat collar turned up and cradled a machine gun. He looked surly and uncommunicative. This was a stark contrast to the sugar-coated Leonard who jealously guarded his public image.” The gun was actually a plastic replica of an M-16 and Hearns did not have his collar up, but it didn’t matter: the image, later reproduced in other publications, was so powerful that it endured, along with the “Hit Man” nickname.
BEFORE THE HEARNS–LEONARD showdown could take place, the world of boxing was rocked by its biggest scandal