Sorcery at Caesars: Sugar Ray's Marvelous Fight

by Steve Marantz

  Fortunately for Hearns, Leonard offered him a solution. Mike Trainer met separately with Steward and Hagler's attorney, Wainwright, in March 1981, as Leonard prepared to meet Larry Bonds (KO 10) in Syracuse. Hagler probably was used as a prop to gain leverage against Hearns, but when Hagler's managers demanded parity, and Steward did not, Leonard's choice was easy.

  Their bout was set for September 16, 1981, at Las Vegas. Before they met, however, they took tune-up bouts, at the Houston Astrodome, in June 1981.

  Hearns knocked out Pablo Baez, after which he joined a ringside TV crew to offer commentary on Leonard's bout against Ayub Kalule. Leonard spotted Hearns and shouted, "Shut up, you don't know how to talk anyway." Hearns, self-conscious about his mangled speech, was insulted. Leonard knocked out Kalule in the 9th round and won the WBA 154-pound title, which suggested that, when the time came, he could move up in weight for Hagler.

  1981: Held by the Title

  Seven months after Hagler became champion his mood had mellowed from anger to annoyance. He and Bertha had married and bought a house on Brockton's west side. He easily had won his first defense against a cartel-connected Venezuelan, Fulgencio Obelmejias, at Boston Garden. His purse had been $500,000, as it would be for his next defense, against Antuofermo.

  On a balmy June afternoon he sat in an alcove of the Provincetown Inn. The championship had not turned out as expected, Hagler explained. If he held the title, he wondered, why did it feel as though it held him?

  "I never worked so hard in my life," he said. "I've been really torn apart in a lot of ways, with my family, mother and father, aunts and uncles. Everybody wants a piece of you.

  "Trying to do personal appearances, to get involved with endorsements, to control your own enterprise, trying to be a businessman, a family man, a father, taking care of ills, of the house...you can't neglect all these things.

  "And you have to be here [training camp]. Mainly you know that this is what you have to do because you can't do it [box] forever.

  "And then there's other people. Friends who say, 'Now you're champion and you don't have time for me.' Every five minutes somebody says to me, 'Marv, can you do this for me?' It only takes five minutes, and they think it's easy for you to do and it's not. Because I don't want to do anything I have to do. I want to do things I enjoy doing and that I do for people. That's the way I feel. I give up a lot of time. I figure that I'm very patient with people, but people also gotta be patient with me."

  (c) Angie Carlino

  Leonard's gig as an HBO commentator brought him to Brockton in 1981 to interview Hagler.

  Hagler broke camp, he recounted, to be a guest in Brockton's centennial parade, and returned without visiting his family and home. Once back, he was asked to donate two fight tickets for a church raffle.

  "I get mad sometimes 'cause I work so hard and people don't understand how hard I work," Hagler said. "I start bitchin' a little bit and my wife and mother say to me, 'Well, Marvin, this is what you wanted, isn't it?' And believe it or not, that calms me right down. I say, 'You're right, this is what I wanted.' So now I can start dealing with it again."

  He was particularly bothered by an absence of endorsement and broadcasting opportunities.

  "I feel I'm a more deserving person than what I've been getting," Hagler said. "Even with the money part, I feel I'm a million dollar fighter."

  Asked if he measured his purses against Leonard's income, which was close to $20 million in 1980, Hagler nodded.

  "Sure, I'd like to make his money," he said. "But I feel everything in time. If it's not there for you it's gonna come to you."

  In June 1981 Hagler won a 4th-round TKO over Antuofermo. Three months later, in September, he was back in Provincetown to prepare for Mustafa Hamsho, a bout for which he was paid $1 million - the first time a middleweight reached the seven-figure plateau. He refused an invitation to attend the Leonard-Hearns bout because it would cost him three days of training. But he agreed to do a promotional spot for pay-per-view in the Boston area, and in it he beat the drums for his own big-money fight. "One of these guys will lose," he said. "The other one is doomed."

  1981: "You're blowing it, son"

  Leonard's left eye was a slit, and a few jabs more could close it. An angry bruise swelled under his right eye. As he slumped on his stool after the 12th round, Angelo Dundee worked on his battered face. Leonard suspected he was behind. Dundee, who had no doubt, invoked his inner Knute Rockne, and delivered a pep talk for the ages.

  "Ray, you only got nine minutes left," Dundee shouted. "You're blowing it, son. You're blowing it now. Let's separate the men from the boys, now. Ray, you gotta fire - you're not firing. Ray, you're blowing it."

  The bell rang for Round 13. An instant before Leonard arose, Dundee screamed into his right ear, "Speed!"

  This was a bout that required no hype or promotion, got a lot, and lived up to it. It was the rare confluence of two brilliant young fighters in their early primes. The major difference was that Leonard was in his fourth Big Fight, while Hearns was in his first.

  They fought behind Caesars, in a temporary outdoor stadium before 25,000-plus spectators, in temperatures that climbed above 100 under TV lights. Leonard made close to $9 million and Hearns close to $6 million with closed-circuit theater and pay-per-view TV revenues. The bout grossed a record $36 million. A promoter selected by Trainer, Dan Duva of Totowa, N.J., broke the Big Fight monopoly of King and Arum.

  It was a rock opera of combat performed in five parts. In the first five rounds Leonard played possum as Hearns stalked. Hearns scored with long lefts, raised a knot under Leonard's left eye, and looked for an opening to unload a knockout punch. Leonard boxed at a distance and appeared unable to solve Hearns' long arms and slashing punches.

  In the 6th round Leonard sprang his trap. He stepped forward, surprised Hearns, and landed a crushing left to the jaw. Hearns was staggered and nearly went down. Leonard sustained his onslaught throughout the 6th and into the 7th, when again it appeared Hearns was on the verge of going down. But Leonard's ambush did not anticipate Hearns' reservoir of grit nor his ring generalship - all of which he drew upon to survive.

  Now Leonard was spent, and worse, his left eye was swollen halfway shut. But the roles were reversed, Leonard stalked Hearns and Hearns circled and flicked jabs from a distance. In rounds 9 though 12 Hearns continued his movement and gradually regained his command and confidence. In the 12th Hearns backed Leonard up with a left hook-right uppercut combination and once again was the aggressor.

  When Dundee exhorted Leonard after the 12th, neither of them knew that Hearns, who had never fought more than 12 rounds and who had dried out more than necessary to make weight, was virtually depleted. The heat and pace had sapped his matchstick legs.

  A minute into the 13th round Leonard resumed the furious attack that had marked the 6th and 7th rounds. He scored with an overhand right, then a left, as Hearns back-pedaled and slipped to the canvas. Leonard unleashed a windmill that Hearns, unschooled in the art of the clinch, was unable to smother. Hearns wobbled, was pounded into the ropes, and fell through, though it was ruled a push. He climbed to his feet, was barraged once again, and went down near the same spot. Hearns took a standing nine count and was saved by the bell.

  Leonard instantly attacked in the 14th. Hearns covered up in vain as Leonard flurried and snapped back his head with short uppercuts. After 20 or 30 unanswered punches, as Leonard signaled with his right hand to referee Dave Pearl for a stoppage, Pearl stepped in.

  When it was stopped, Hearns was ahead by 4 points, 3 points, and 2 points on the scorecards, which surprised Leonard and media and touched off criticism of the 10-point system.

  The next day Leonard appeared before media, with his swollen eyes hidden behind sunglasses, and was asked if he planned to fight Hagler. His coy response suggested he was in no hurry to do so.

  "I feel the longer I wait the older Hagler gets," Leonard said.

  Chapter 8

  1982: L
egally Marvelous

  William "Caveman" Lee challenged Hagler in March 1982. Hagler asked ABC to identify him on-air as "Marvelous Marvin Hagler," but the network refused, even though it saw fit to use Lee's nickname. Hagler was infuriated, and after he knocked out Lee in the 1st round, he petitioned Plymouth County Probate Court to change his name to "Marvelous Marvin."

  The court required Hagler to produce his birth certificate from the City of Newark, thus confirming his birth date of May 23, 1954. Before the petition was approved Wainwright explained to Hagler that his true age would be made public. "He hesitated momentarily, and decided to go through with it," Wainwright recalled. Though his last name legally was now "Marvin," public, press, and Hagler himself continued to use "Hagler" as a last name. Nor did "Marvelous" catch on as a first name - he was still "Marvin" to family, friends, fans, and media.

  Bertha gave birth to a girl, Charelle, early in 1982, as Hagler, the Petronellis, and Arum maneuvered to find him a bout appropriate for his new name. They settled on Hearns, ostensibly as an elimination bout for the right to meet Leonard. After Leonard's surgery in May the proposed Hagler-Hearns bout, never on sound financial footing, fell apart. Hagler's handlers blamed Hearns when they should have looked in a mirror.

  At this point Hagler's sense of victimization was justified - he was the victim of flawed management. The Petronelli brothers and Arum had tied him to a second multi-bout deal with HBO, the young pay-cable channel, which limited his maneuverability. His handlers had allowed the sanctioning bodies to rule his selection of opponents, when he should have ignored them, as Leonard had. Nonetheless, Hagler remained steadfastly loyal to the two brothers from Brockton.

  In July Hagler suffered a cracked rib while training for another $500,000 defense against Obelmejias. The next morning he winced while settling onto a couch in the lobby of the Provincetown Inn. The pain in his rib equaled the dejection on his face.

  "They tell you when you're the best money is gonna come," Hagler said. "Well, I been hangin' in there. They say when you're champion people will come to you with their products. This stuff is supposed to happen, but it hasn't for Marvin Hagler. It's been kinda slow.

  "I'm a million dollar fighter. I feel cheated getting $500,000."

  As Hagler shifted on the couch, his cracked rib sent another knife-like reminder of his aggrieved situation.

  "What else can happen to me?" Hagler asked.

  On November 9 Hagler had the answer. He flew to Baltimore, and expected Leonard to make him $10 million wealthier. Instead, he watched Leonard announce his retirement.

  He was Marvelous, but his career was not.

  1982: R.I.P. Duk-Koo Kim

  Four nights after Leonard's retirement announcement in Baltimore, he was reminded, tragically, of the peril he no longer faced.

  Leonard was with CBS in Las Vegas for the bout between 135-pound champion Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini and challenger Duk-Koo Kim, the son of a Korean rice farmer. The night before the bout Kim, 23, had scribbled in his hotel room, "Kill or be killed."

  Leonard witnessed a bruising match, waged evenly for 7 rounds, between two fighters with similar head-to-head styles. From the 8th round on Mancini gained the upper hand, and by the 12th Kim stumbled and took unanswered punches to the head. Mancini unleashed a thunderous barrage in the 13th, and landed forty unanswered punches, mostly to the head. Kim appeared defenseless, but somehow mounted an attack late in the round that kept the bout from being stopped. Mancini finally decked Kim with a hard right in the 14th round to end the bout. Kim was helped to his corner, where he slumped over and fell into a coma. Four days later he died. His devastated mother later committed suicide, and Kim became a cult hero in Korea, celebrated in a film, Champion.

  Kim's death, nearly three years after Willie Classen's death, spurred urgent calls for reform. By the end of 1982 one of the governing bodies, the World Boxing Council, eliminated the 15-round championship distance in favor of 12 rounds. Early in 1983 the Journal of the American Medical Association called for a ban on boxing, and short of that, empowerment of ringside doctors to stop a fight at any time.

  Yet another ghost whispered to Leonard. In retirement he was safe from subdural hematoma, coma, and the indignity of punch drunkenness. His abdication had deflated Hagler, but left him, at 26, with his eyesight, health, money in the bank, broadcasting career, adoring public, and a loving family. Leonard's life seemed almost too good to be true. And so it was.

  Chapter 9

  1983: Cocaine

  Without an opponent to fool, Leonard fooled himself. He descended into a demimonde of entertainers and celebrities where cocaine was as routine as first-class travel, four-star hotels and restaurants, VIP rooms, red carpets, and thick rolls of cash. His lifestyle damaged his health, destroyed his marriage, and alienated his children and parents.

  "I'd go to parties, take a leak, and there was cocaine right there," Leonard recounted years later.

  Typical of Leonard's schedule was an event shortly after his "retirement" announcement. The NAACP 15th annual Image Awards Ceremony took place at the Hollywood Palladium on Dec. 6, 1982. Thirty black actors, musicians, and sports figures were honored for presenting positive images of blacks. Leonard, Magic Johnson, Rod Carew, and Franco Harris were the four athletes honored.

  Singer Lena Horne, actresses Jayne Kennedy, Cecily Tyson, Marla Gibbs, actors Lou Gossett Jr., Moses Gunn, Paul Winfield, and Sherman Hemsley, and musicians BB King, Al Jarreau, and Kool & The Gang won awards. Kennedy, the beautiful actress-TV sports reporter, was linked with Leonard in gossip.

  Los Angeles was now his favorite environ. His celebrity friends included Richard Pryor, Michael and Jermaine Jackson, LeVar Burton, Ben Vereen, Lola Falana, Natalie Cole, Barry White, Whoopi Goldberg, Michael J. Fox, and even an aged comedian, Milton Berle.

  (c) Ollie Dunlap

  Singer Natalie Cole and Sugar Ray Leonard.

  Pryor, a boxing fan, had suffered third-degree burns over half his body in June 1980 as he free-based cocaine. In the hospital, he used a new technology, pay-per-view TV, to watch the first Leonard-Duran match. Pryor met Leonard through James Anderson, the burly bodyguard who lived in Los Angeles and had developed, through his association with Ali, a large celebrity clientele. Anderson often accompanied Leonard on his nocturnal romps.

  "If socially there happened to be a young lady Ray took a fancy to and she was going to go with us, James was pretty good at screening," said Ollie Dunlap. "There might be 60 girls in a club, but 40 came every weekend. James knew who the party girls were and who were there to get drinks."

  (c) Ollie Dunlap

  Advisor Ollie Dunlap, left, dancer Lola Falana, and Sugar Ray Leonard.

  Meanwhile, Leonard's well-paid jobs as ringside commentator for HBO and CBS kept him on the road, often in Las Vegas, where women and drugs were virtual tourist attractions. As his dissipation gathered momentum friends and associates began to notice. Gil Clancy, the veteran CBS boxing commentator, was among the first to notice Leonard's frequent trips to airplane lavatories, and the telltale signs around his nose. One morning at his Las Vegas hotel suite, Leonard was found seated on the edge of his bed by his brother, Roger, and Dunlap. "I got ripped off," he told them, sheepishly. A woman had stolen his jewelry and cash. He had slept through her stealthy departure after a night of drugs and sex.

  "That was the last time we let girls into Ray's room," Dunlap said. "He would use my room and I would sleep in his."

  When Leonard turned to cocaine - in 1983 according to his own recollection - he was late to the party, or debacle, such as it was. America's elite athletes, entertainers, and musicians acquired the habit throughout the 1970s, lulled by popular culture and mass media into thinking it fashionable and benign. A 1977 Newsweek story reported, "Among hostesses in the smart sets of Los Angeles and New York, a little cocaine, like Dom Perignon and Beluga caviar, is now de rigueur at dinners. Some party givers pass it around with the canapes on silver trays...the user experiences a feeling
of potency, of confidence, of energy."

  The new decade was two days old when Bernard King of the Utah Jazz was arrested in Salt Lake City and charged with sodomy, forcible sexual abuse, and possession of cocaine. Another Jazz player, Terry Furlow, died in May 1980 after crashing his car at 4 a.m. in a Cleveland suburb with traces of cocaine in his system. A Los Angeles Times article in August 1980 asserted that 40 to 75 percent of NBA players used cocaine, based on estimates of players and executives.

  Cocaine allegations engulfed Duran after the "No Mas" bout, supposedly because he had resorted to cocaine, an appetite suppressant, to shed more than 30 pounds. Duran denied it and his manager, Carlos Eleta, professed not to know. In the late 1980s Eleta would be jailed in Georgia and charged with smuggling cocaine.

  A Time magazine article in 1981 showed a champagne glass full of sparkling white powder with the headline "High on Cocaine - a Drug with Status and Menace." Former Minnesota Vikings All-Pro Carl Eller went public with his cocaine habit in September 1981, saying it had cost him $2000 a week, wrecked his personal life, and eroded his football skills before he underwent treatment.

  Leonard's eye surgery preceded by a month a shocking expose in Sports Illustrated magazine. In June 1982 a former New Orleans Saints lineman, Don Reese, who had been convicted of selling cocaine in 1977, co-authored a cover story that alleged widespread drug abuse in the NFL. Reese, who played for the Saints from 1978 to 1980, claimed that players snorted coke in the locker room before games and at halftime "and stayed up all hours of the night roaming the streets to get more stuff." Cocaine use in the NFL was so extensive, Reese wrote, that it "now controls and corrupts the game."