Hit Man - Brian Hughes [85]
Although neither man would publicly confirm the reasons behind their divorce, insiders claimed that money was at the heart of the split, specifically Hearns’s increasing resentment at the large amounts which Steward deducted from his purse money. “I get ten per cent as the trainer, which is standard in boxing,” Steward would later explain. “And I was entitled to twenty-five per cent as his manager, which is the usual fee.” Hearns, however, was quick to point out that these percentages were levied on his earnings of nearly $54 million, putting him among the top five highest paid fighters in the sport’s history. Steward reminded observers of his early and unrewarded heavy investment in his fighters and claimed that this was merely his entitlement. His bitterness was palpable. “I can now safely say that Tommy Hearns was never a talented fighter,” Steward said. “On four or five occasions, I thought that he was finished but each time I built him back up, got him ready for the next chance. I guess that he doesn’t remember any of that. If so, then good riddance.”
There was a desolate mood in Steward’s Kronk gym as he recounted to friends his efforts to rekindle Hearns’s career after each of his three professional defeats. He cited the occasion that he had paid $25,000 to help form the World Boxing Organization after the loss to Iran Barkley, in order to secure Hearns a fight with James Kinchen for the WBO super-middleweight championship. “Hearns had to have that title because we knew Sugar Ray Leonard would try to win a fifth championship,” he claimed. “If Tommy didn’t have that title, we couldn’t have got such a huge purse of eleven million dollars for him.” He claimed he had found it increasingly difficult to motivate Hearns for certain fights against weaker opponents, and had grown disenchanted with trying to secure bigger purse money for Hearns against such lightly regarded opposition. Hearns’s final words to him, a week or so before, had been, “Nobody has ever managed like you but from now on, I want to manage myself.”
The boxing fraternity quickly chose sides, with many of the sport’s leading trainers rallying to their colleague’s cause. Pat Petronelli, the co-manager of retired former champion Marvin Hagler, told the press, “Tommy Hearns has given up a great manager to go with one of the biggest conmen in the world.” Sportswriter Shelby Strother said, “This sucker punch was a low blow from Hearns.” And promoter Bob Arum was also quick to side with Steward. “This is monstrous,” he blustered. “I love Hearns but he will never fight for me again. Not ever!”
Hearns responded to the public backlash by agreeing to an exclusive interview with Mike O’Hara of the Detroit News. It was to cause more recriminations. He started by explaining the reasons for the break-up. “Things have been going on for a few years and been building up to a point where I have now decided that I am tired of it and I don’t want to deal with it anymore.” He went on, “Emanuel would never be frank with me. He’d tell me things to pamper me, to satisfy me for the moment and I got tired of that. He’d talk about certain fights that were coming through but the truth was, he never even thought about doing it, like the [Roy] Jones fight.” He dismissed Steward’s claims that he only took his entitled thirty-five per cent cut. “My last fight against Leonard, Emanuel took almost forty-eight per cent. The fight