Hit Man - Brian Hughes [93]
When he finally returned to action, he faced Andrew Maynard, a former top-class amateur who had won an Olympic gold medal at the 1988 games in Seoul. Maynard had turned professional in February 1989 with Ray Leonard as his manager and racked up twelve straight wins to capture the vacant North American Boxing Federation light-heavyweight championship. This success convinced his over-ambitious management team to pitch him in against Bobby Czyz but he was cruelly exposed and flattened in seven one-sided rounds.
He then went on a six-fight winning streak, stopping shopworn legend Matthew Saad Muhammad in 1991 and setting up a fight with Frank Tate for the NABF light-heavyweight title. Tate crushed him in the eleventh round. The following year, he moved up to cruiserweight to challenge WBC title holder Anaclet Wamba, who knocked him down and won a unanimous decision. Maynard continued to fight, but gradually faded into obscurity. He saw the November bout with Hearns as an opportunity to arrest this slide against a high-profile opponent but Hearns viewed it as a safe option. His stunning first-round knockout of Maynard at Caesars Palace justified his decision. Victory was followed three months later with a bout against Dan “Pastor” Ward, from West Memphis, for the NABF cruiserweight title. Ward was dispatched in the first of a scheduled twelve rounds at the Las Vegas MGM Grand.
Three weeks later, on 19 February 1994, a galvanised Hearns went to Charlotte, North Carolina, to defend his belt against Puerto Rican Freddie “The Rock” Delgado. Hearns agreed to the fight because Bobby Czyz was on the show’s undercard and he believed that it would whet the public appetite for their proposed match-up. The Hit Man scored a knockdown in the first round when he landed a right cross to the forehead, but Delgado returned the attack with interest and landed a stunning right in the next round to deck the Detroit great. This prompted Delgado to seize the initiative and assume the role of aggressor. They both traded flurries of punches and each took turns threatening to floor the other. Hearns turned the momentum in the ninth when he pressed the attack, snapping Delgado’s head back on his shoulders with stiff jabs. He cut Delgado under both eyes and wrestled back control to win a unanimous points decision.
It would be another thirteen months before Hearns fought again. This time he was due to fight Sean McClain for yet another world title, the lightly regarded World Boxing Union cruiserweight crown. But a week before their bout, scheduled for 31 March 1995, McClain pulled out, unable to make the weight. Emanuel Steward scoured his extensive boxing network to find an acceptable replacement and the name thrown up by his detective work was one Lenny “The Rage” LaPaglia, a little-known fighter from Chicago who claimed a respectable record of thirty-seven victories and eight losses. LaPaglia was on a hot streak, having knocked out nine opponents in ten victories, and was stunned but excited at the opportunity to face a boxing legend at Detroit’s Fox Theatre.
The Chicago fighter talked up his credentials. “I will have the natural power advantage over Hearns because he is not a genuine cruiserweight,” be said. “He’s just a natural light-heavyweight and I am a very hard puncher and I don’t think he can handle my punching power.” Warming to his task, LaPaglia speculated that he would relish