Hit Man - Brian Hughes [73]
The decision to fight Barkley, whose unusual first name was attributed to his stepfather’s love of geography, followed a process of elimination. Hearns had revised his targets and intended to unify the middleweight division by beating the two other 160-pound champions, Sumbu Kalambay and Frank Tate, but both proved too difficult to entice. Barkley, a leading challenger, was first mooted as a possibility in April. He was an aggressive slugger who enjoyed a toe-to-toe brawl. Hearns admitted that he did not know a great deal about him except that he possessed a big left hook, which had dropped the number one contender, James Kinchen, eighteen months earlier on the way to a win that projected him into the world’s elite middleweights. Hearns recalled watching this fight before meeting Doug DeWitt and was impressed by the speed of Barkley’s hands. His record of twenty-four victories against four defeats, with fifteen early endings, along with an unsuccessful tilt at Sambu Kalambay’s title made him an obvious candidate.
As the deal for the fight was inked, Barkley recalled that when he boxed as an amateur, he had hung pictures on his bedroom wall of Hearns, Hagler and Leonard because he dreamed about fighting them one day. He was determined not to let his dream fight pass without making the most of it. He told a journalist from the New York Times, “Hearns is shop-worn” and offered the evidence that Juan Roldan had repeatedly rocked him. “What the Argentinian started, he couldn’t finish, but if I find a sign saying ‘hit me’ on Hearns’s chin, I will not make the same mistake.” He predicted that he was going to win the title by knockout.
Hearns had resumed training at the start of May and based his camp in Phoenix before moving to Las Vegas and Johnny Tocco’s gym. He insisted on employing Milton McCrory as one of his sparring partners. The former welterweight champion had recently lost to Lupe Aquino and announced his retirement from the ring. Hearns had been devastated by the loss and believed that by joining his camp, he could build up his friend’s confidence and encourage him to continue to fight again. Steward prepared Hearns to deal with the pressure that would be exerted by Barkley and prophesied a second round knockout for Hearns, who he was confident possessed too much strength. Hearns was buoyed by the fact that Barkley had been found wanting whenever he had stepped into the elite level of boxing and remarked, “He hasn’t been in there with anyone close to me either.”
He was also thrilled with the results of an operation he had undergone in secret. He had been persistently troubled with breathing problems, which were diagnosed as caused by blocked nasal passages. “I have had a swollen nostril that’s been troubling me for years,” he said. “On one side of my nose, I was breathing at only fifty per cent capacity and just ten per cent on the other side.” Following a two-hour operation, and after the victory against Roldan, he boasted, “My endurance has now improved significantly.”
IRAN BARKLEY GREW up in the Patterson Projects, a densely populated grid of public housing in the Mott Haven district of the South Bronx, an area notorious for drugs, gangs and mayhem. “It was so tough that he had to fight his way in and out of his apartment building or pay extortion money to bigger, older youths,” reported Boxing News. “But he took up boxing on the urging of his older sister