Hit Man - Brian Hughes [81]
The three men sitting in judgement were as divided as the watching millions. Jerry Roth voted in favour of Hearns by 113-112 yet Tommy Kaczmarek rated Leonard as the winner by the same margin. Dalby Shirley could not separate either man and scored it a draw, which determined the final decision. All three officials had given Leonard the final round, Shirley by a 10-8 margin, which clinched the drawn verdict.
Neither fighter responded with indignity when the decision was announced. Sugar Ray Leonard told the press pack that he wanted to watch the film of the fight to assess the accuracy of the scoring but accepted that both he and Hearns had, “showed that we are both champions.” Hearns was equally sanguine. “You have to leave these decisions up to the judges and I respect their decision,” he declared. “I’m proud that I boxed a draw. The judges could have ruled that I lost and so I leave here, thankful for what I have.” His final words offered a glimpse into the real relief that he felt in exorcising an eight-year-old ghost. “You have no idea how often this man has been on my conscious,” he said.
The decision, however, was far from popular, with a majority feeling that Hearns had done enough to win, not least because of the two knockdowns he scored. Judge Shirley later said that, on a general impression, he thought Hearns had won the fight, but he submitted his scorecards round by round and was surprised to discover he had the two men even at the end. Certainly Hearns looked and acted more like the winner at the press conference the next day, with Leonard appearing unusually subdued while Hearns seemed happy that, at the very least, he had restored his reputation. To his great credit, he refused to make a big issue out of the scoring, and perhaps for this reason there was not as much furore about it as there might have been. Both men again paid tribute to the other. “Tommy proved he was a real champ,” said Leonard, while Hearns joked, “Ray, next time, don’t fight me so hard!”
Where next for the Hit Man? Marvin Hagler at ringside said he would consider a Hearns fight for $20 million, a ridiculous figure that was never going to materialise, especially as the closed circuit figures for Hearns-Leonard had been disappointing. The company that organised the closed circuit lost money and its boss, Lou Falcigno, said, “People didn’t seem to care. And I think the same would apply to a rematch, or Duran or Hagler against Leonard. I think we have to wait for new and exciting fighters.” The great era of Benitez, Duran, Hagler, Hearns and Leonard, the kings of the middle weight divisions, seemed to be drawing to a close.
16 GENERAL HEARNS
IT WOULD BE another eight months before the name Thomas Hearns was once again in the sports headlines, when the flamboyant tycoon Donald Trump announced that he would headline his Atlantic City promotion against Michael Olajide. Hearns’s appearance alongside the effervescent Trump prompted the New York Post’s Phil Mushnick to deliver a withering assessment of both men in his paper’s edition of 19 February 1990, under the headline, “Punch-Drunk Boxers No Match For Trump.” Mushnick told his readers, “Although it is conceivable that he can still fight [...] at just thirty-one-years-old, Thomas Hearns is already showing unmistakably clear signs that he is punch drunk. Six years ago, Hearns was bright, alert and all together. Now he slurs his speech, which is spoken in an Ali-like whisper. His eyes roll around in his head and he frequently drifts off into unintelligible tangents.” Mushnick continued, “All Donald Trump has to do is stop looking in the mirror and listen to the sound of something other