My View from the Corner

by Angelo Dundee

  There were other things, too, little things that didn't show up on film but I thought would play an important role in the fight. One such thing was the so-called "rust" factor. While most of the writers were busy filling space writing that Ray hadn't fought in almost three years and only once in five, very few, if any, mentioned Marvin's having fought only once in two years—and that, in a less-than-memorable fight against John Mugabi, his once "marvelous" skills showed signs of erosion. Add to that the fact Ray was the only fighter in recent memory to come back as the younger fighter against an older one, and all of a sudden Ray's chances looked a helluva lot better than the 3–1 odds favoring Hagler.

  There was also the question of Marvin's confidence. Or should I say Marvin's overconfidence? Just to get Ray into the ring, Marvin had readily agreed to all of Ray's contractual demands. Ray wanted a twelve-round, not a fifteen-round, fight to ensure he wouldn't get fatigued. He also preferred lighter Mexican Reyes gloves for speed. And he wanted a 20-foot ring, all the better to maneuver in. It made no difference to Marvin who agreed to all of Ray's requests, probably thinking what difference would the ring size make, Ray wasn't that tall and would fit into any size ring when he fell. And Hagler probably thought he wouldn't need twelve rounds anyway. And, oh, one more thing! Marvin and his promoter were already looking past Ray to another fight, this one tentatively planned against welterweight champion Donald Curry.

  Call me a cockeyed optimist if you want, but after connecting all the dots and adding everything up, I left for training camp believing not only that Ray would win but that he would catch Marvin with a punch and knock him out.

  When I arrived at the Hilton Head (South Carolina) training camp three weeks before the fight, I found Ray in great physical condition, fantastic shape, ahead of schedule. I never had to worry about him being in shape because he was always in shape. And ever since his compass needle had started pointing in the direction of Hagler, he had been working out three or four times a week. Now, here at the training camp, under the watchful eye of trainer Janks Morton, that great physical shape had been converted into great fighting shape. Just looking at him, it looked like he was ready to jump into the ring right then and there.

  I say it "looked like" because something didn't feel quite right. I wasn't the only one to get those vibes. Within minutes after my arrival, publicist Irving Rudd came over to me and greeted me with, "Ang, this guy doesn't look good. He's gonna get the shit kicked out of him."

  It was almost a case of "if you don't know where you're going, you can't get lost." While Ray was in terrific shape, he wasn't in shape to fight Hagler. I've always been able to see if I know what I'm looking at, and it took me only a minute or so to see that everything was moving in the wrong direction.

  You see, coming up with a strategy is not a paint-by-the-numbers process, but one sketched out differently for each and every opponent. And apparently zilch attention had been paid to showing Ray how to fight Hagler. Take, for example, one of the first things I saw him try to do was get out of a clinch by moving to his right. "No ... no ... no," I hollered. "Go to the left." Ray didn't seem to understand, saying, "But I'll be going into his left hand," thinking Hagler's left was his power hand. "Yeah," I answered, "but his strength is in his right because he's a converted right-handed fighter." Now that I had Ray's attention I told him, "When this guy leans on you, make sure you not only slide to your right side but always lean on his right shoulder, not his left."

  Ray had also flirted with the idea of going toe-to-toe with Marvin, to attack him. I had to put a stop to that nonsense. I hollered at him, "What? Are you nuts?" His game plan was to move, then move some more, not get into a battle with Marvin. Moreover, I told him to break up Marvin's rhythm. When he took that one-two step of his, preparatory to throwing a punch, pop him, then get the hell out of there. Ray listened. You see, he was different than Muhammad. With Muhammad I'd have to go around the mulberry bush, make him think he was the one who came up with the idea. But Ray was different. He listened. Especially after one of his sparring partners, Quincy Taylor, had put him on his duff while he was going toe-to-toe with him preparing to take on Marvin in, as he originally planned, a toe-to-toe battle.

  Now he started implementing the fight plan I laid out for him in every sparring session, working against the grain to negate his left-handed sparring partners' right without concentrating on their left.

  And when we watched films of Hagler's fights looking for flaws, it was like Max Schmeling looking at films of Joe Louis before their first fight and saying, "I 'seed' something ..." as we continued to pick out Hagler's fault lines.

  Despite his inactivity, Ray was now brimming with confidence, looking and sounding like a man who knew all the headwaiters in all the best places in town and knew he could get a table anytime he wanted. His table was now set for Marvelous Marvin Hagler.

  Trainer Al Silvani once said that no fighter was truly calm before a fight, that "all have some fright inside." I'm not sure I'd call it "fright," preferring instead to call it being "nerved up." But basically Al was right, all boxers, in varying degrees, are "nerved up" or "antsy" before a fight.

  Even Muhammad Ali, who looked so calm during a fight, tended less to "float like a butterfly" before fights than have butterflies floating in his stomach. Before his first fight with Sonny Liston, he was a boundless mass of energy, restless and unable to sit still. Instead of resting in the dressing room, he went out and watched his brother fight a prelim match against Levi Forte. Then he returned to the dressing room and, after having his hands wrapped, spent several minutes slamming his wrapped fists into the metal lockers. It got so that Sugar Ray Robinson almost had to sit on him to keep him from expending all of his energy before the fight.

  Leonard was no different. To say he was on edge before the fight would be an understatement. He was a bundle of nerves, almost a nervous wreck, unsure of what five years with only one fight had done to his ring skills, uncertain of his stamina, and unconfident of his ability to contend with Hagler.

  Ray's crisis of confidence would last less than three minutes—or one round. For at the opening bell, Hagler came out of his corner in an unconventional, at least for him, right-handed stance. What the hell was that? I thought. I could only guess that Marvin was so dismissive of Ray—even having mockingly called him "pretty boy" at the prefight press conference—that he wanted to show him up, outbox him, convinced he'd catch him sooner or later and knock him out whichever way he was fighting. But, hey, you don't take nobody cheap. You never give anything away. And by fighting right-handed, not left-handed, Marvin was not only giving Ray an inviting target, one Ray took advantage of, peppering the advancing Hagler with flurries from the outside then moving away before Marvin could set himself to retaliate from the right side, he was also giving away rounds. And allowing Ray to gain confidence.

  Ray's confidence was further buoyed when, near the end of the first round, Ray feinted and Marvin overreacted, throwing up his hands. Coming back to the corner Ray said, almost as if breathing a sigh of relief, "Shit, he's scared, too."

  Fueled by his own arrogance and stubborn machismo, Hagler continued to fight right-handed long after its ineffectiveness had become apparent to everyone but Marvelous Marvin himself. Fighting from the right side, Marvin was forced to wage battle on unfamiliar terms and was being maneuvered by Ray into positions where he couldn't throw punches. Even when he changed back to his normal southpaw stance, it looked like he was more concerned about looking bad than fighting good as he remained hopelessly polite, allowing Ray to dictate the action, biding his time between flurries, circling out of reach, and walking Hagler around.

  Joe Liebling once wrote "tactics are merely executions of strategy." And as Ray continued to execute our strategy to perfection, I got caught up in the action, hollering at Ray, "Box ... box ... dip and slide." And at Hagler, "Hey, Marvin, where did he go? There he is, Marvin. Look behind you, Marvin."

  But our "coaching" from the corner took
on other forms as well. With Charlie Brotman at my side holding up a stopwatch, I'd continually ask him, "How much time? How much time?" And when he told me "thirty seconds," I'd pound the mat, telling Ray the time left in the round, enough time to begin one of his late-round flurries. And then, as the clock ticked down, I'd have Ollie Dunlop, who had a much stronger voice than my squeaky one, shout out "ten seconds," and Ray would turn it up a notch. Through the years several people have claimed that Ray "stole" rounds by responding to our timing cues with end-of-the-round flurries. But I prefer to call it "one-upsmanship," the kind practiced by great fighters like Sugar Ray Robinson and Barney Ross, all the better to capture the attention of the judges who seem to be impressed by such end-of-round activity. That's their last look. Whatever you call it, Ray's flurrying at the end of every round and his tactics of staying away from Marvin combined to carry the first four rounds on two of the three judges' scorecards and three of the first four on the other.

  Whenever Hagler developed a disliking for an opponent—as he did with Mustafa Hamsho, wanting to "wipe that shitty grin off his face," or Wilfred Scypion, wanting "him at my feet because he's got a big mouth"—he made them pay for their real or imagined disrespect. For Ray that disrespect took the form of his not fighting Marvin's fight in the trenches where Marvin wanted him. Now, after spending four rounds of calling Ray a "wuss" and a "sissy" for fighting "like a girl," Marvin was determined to make Ray pay the price for showing such disrespect.

  At the bell signaling the start of the fifth round, Marvin came out like a raging bull, intent on exacting that price. For the first time he forced Ray into the ropes and landed a left to the head, a right to the body, and another short left to Ray's face. Ray came back with a left to the head, but Hagler got in a left to the head as well and then a right and a left. With less than thirty seconds to go in the round, Hagler landed a bodacious right uppercut that caught Ray flush. Ray was in trouble, but somehow Marvin didn't realize it.

  As Ray plopped down on his stool, he said, "He had me and didn't know it" as if he now had Hagler. But you sure couldn't prove it by seeing what happened at the end of Round Five. So, rather than giving him hell about getting his butt kicked, in words as concise as a ten-word telegram, I calmly told him, "Look, I know he's not hitting you on the ropes. I know you're blocking those punches. But when you stand on the ropes, it looks like you're getting hit. So make sure you move off the ropes so he can't steal rounds."

  If Marvin was laboring under a delusion that Round Five was the turning point in the fight, he didn't labor long. Things reverted back in Round Six with Marvin slowly following Ray around the ring, gloves held high, and Ray repeatedly stepping to one side and catching the incoming Hagler with a combination before moving quickly away. Still, by Round Eight Hagler's constant aggression had brought him back to about even on the judges' scorecards, even though Marvin was missing most of his punches. Taking note of Hagler's efforts to air-condition the ring, closed-circuit commentator Gil Clancy said, "Leonard's not doing anything to make Hagler miss, he's just missing." If that was an example of the so-called "effective aggression" judges are supposed to reward in their scoring, then they probably would have given the fight to Goliath for falling forward dead.

  The ninth was one of those white-knuckle rounds that give trainers agita. Ray's legs, which had taken him out of trouble time and again, suddenly deserted him, and Marvin, forcing the action, cornered him against the ropes and landed several hard rights before Ray managed to escape with a flurry of his own, landing more punches but getting much the worse of the bargain. Moments later, with signs of fatigue setting in, Ray was again forced to the ropes and made to stand and deliver. This time Hagler landed a hard right before Ray, in a furious give-and-take, came back to close out the round with several crisp punches.

  At the bell an exhausted Leonard staggered back to the corner and fell heavily on the stool with a puff of relief. Having worked with many champions over the years, it has always been my belief that what separates great fighters from the rest is that little extra something, call it their hidden reservoir of inner strength if you will. It was now time to summon up that strength of character, so I asked him to "suck it up." I also told him, "Don't trade shots with this sucker ... that's a no-no."

  At the bell for the tenth, Marvin came out hell-bent on following up his Round Nine assault, stalking Ray with the intent of breaking him. Somehow Ray dug deep and found that inner source of strength I knew he had, managing, although by now totally exhausted, to evade Marvelous Marvin's punches, which were coming one at a time and missing completely. It was almost as if when Marvin knocked, nobody was there. His inability to get to Ray so frustrated him that Marvin was reduced to hollering at his tormentor, "Come on, bitch, fight like a man ... you little bitch."

  Round Eleven was more of the same, Hagler coming in and Ray moving away, leaving a flurry or two as a reminder of where he had been. Several times the two fell into a clinch, where Ray, as per our strategy, leaned on Marvin's right shoulder and, on the break, exited left, completely offsetting Marvin's right hand. One of those times, as Marvin's head came dangerously close to butting Ray, I hollered up at referee Richard Steele, "Watch that bald-headed sucker's head!" But the round was mostly one of Ray staying out of Marvin's wheelhouse and frustrating his every attempt to lure Ray in.

  It was now Ray's fight to win. And as the bell for the twelfth and final round rang, like Paul Giamatti in Cinderella Man, who hollered out to the cinematic James J. Braddock, "Last round ... that's right ... new champ," I tried my own form of cheerleading, hollering, "Three more minutes ... three more minutes and you're the new champ of the world!" I not only wanted to exhort Ray to close the show, but I also wanted to sell the idea to the judges. I don't know what effect my hollering had, but I felt in the pit of my stomach that Ray soon would be crowned the new champ. He had dominated the action, fought his fight, and imposed his will on Hagler. And the fans knew it, too, standing up and shouting, "Su-gar Ray ... Sugar Ray."

  As the seconds wound down to the one-minute mark, instead of waiting for the "thirty-second" signal, Ray hollered over, "How much time?" Told "one minute," Ray began his victory dance, waving his fist in the air to spur on the crowd. Marvin, too, went into a two-step as the round came to a close, and the Caesars Palace crowd rose as one to cheer on the two.

  In what seemed like an eternity but was really only a couple of minutes, the official decision was announced: judges Lou Fillipo and Dave Moretti both scored it 115–113, but each for a different fighter, and judge Jo Jo Guerra scored it an improbable 118–112. There was a pause and a pants-wetting second before "... for the winner ... and NEW world middleweight champion ... Sugar Ray Leonard."

  The improbable had happened. Sugar Ray had turned conventional thinking on its ear with his comeback after a layoff of three-plus years and only one fight in five to best the man thought to be unbeatable. It was one of my most satisfying moments in boxing.

  Unfortunately, it would also be my last with Sugar Ray Leonard.

  After the fight Marvin complained he had been robbed. But, hey, he wasn't the only one. Here I was, having just pulled off one of the greatest tactical successes of my career and somehow my efforts had run afoul of the economics of Sugar Ray Leonard Inc., most notably attorney Mike Trainer who had rewarded me—if that's the right word—with substantially less than what I had expected.

  I never had any problems with any of my fighters. When Herbert Muhammad became the manager of Ali he told me, "You'll be with this guy as long as he fights" and treated me fairly. And the year after the Hagler fight, Pinklon Thomas, after losing to Evander Holyfield, made sure that when the purse was divided I got my fair share, saying, "I don't care if I get a dime, Angelo's got to get paid." Unfortunately, it didn't work that way with Sugar Ray Leonard Inc.

  Oh, how I tried coming to terms with Trainer. I had written letters and my lawyer had even tried calling Trainer's office leaving word that I wouldn't be going anywhere
until I had a contract and knew what I was going to get paid. But there was no response. I had even written Ray himself, but again no response.

  Jump-skip about a year and a half after the Hagler fight and Ray, who never met a challenge he didn't like, was considering fighting Donny LaLonde for his WBC light-heavyweight championship. I didn't like the fight, thinking LaLonde was "too big" for Ray. But Ray, salivating at the challenge like one of Pavlov's experimental dogs, decided to take it anyway, especially after the accommodating WBC, making up its rules on the fly, made the fight for two championships—the WBC light-heavyweight and the WBC super-middleweight titles, giving Ray a chance to add two more pieces of hardware to his growing list of belts.

  A day before the press conference announcing the LaLonde fight, I got a call from Trainer telling me to be at the press conference. I told him I wouldn't attend until I knew where I stood, contract-wise. No answer to that, just be there.

  That did it! I was tired of being run around and had had my fill of Mike Trainer and his manipulations. A light switch went on, and in one of those "you-can't-fire-me-I-quit" moments we all dream about, I decided enough was enough and that I was no longer interested in being trotted out and put on display like the Queen of England's ceremonial jewelry. I was not going to be at the press conference.

  Ray would go on to stalk his own youth, always looking for that challenge at the end of his tunnel. But he would have to do it without me. I know Ray would say my absence had no effect, but fighting with all the frequency of Halley's Comet he would fight five more times over the next nine years, winning only two of them. Still, had he said something, anything, telling me he wanted me in his corner, I would have been there for him. I cared for him and still do. In my mind Ray Leonard will always be a champion. He was born a champion and will be a champion until the day he dies.