Marvelous Marvin Hagler. Old-school.
Marvelous Marvin Hagler died last weekend.
He lived in our current culture, but he really wasn’t a part of it because he didn’t belong.
Our culture is about fear and Hagler was all about ignoring fear.
Our culture prizes submission for some and demands public feelings and public weeping. And when the phrase “toxic masculinity” is used, we are expected to nod our heads in assent as if in prayer.
But Hagler did not belong in this new culture. He was a prizefighter of the old-school. He knew who he was. And he knew what he was: The undisputed middleweight champion of the world.
He held the world title for seven years and fought all comers. He wasn’t flashy, but then discipline is never flashy. A will of iron isn’t flashy. The refusal to submit isn’t flashy.
Maybe that’s why we miss him. And why it hurt so much when we heard he died.
Shortly after his death, a rumor circulated endlessly in the media and on Twitter that it was related to the COVID-19 pandemic or a vaccine. Hagler’s wife, Kay, took to Facebook, apologizing for her rushed commentary, to shoot down the rumors.
She said that she’s the only person who knows the details. “For sure wasn’t the vaccine that caused his death,” she wrote, adding that “now is not the time to talk nonsense,” according to USA Today.
Hagler didn’t talk nonsense. He was part of prizefighting’s last golden age with names such as Thomas Hearns, Roberto Duran and Sugar Ray Leonard.
You can watch them on YouTube. His war with Hearns is legendary. His fight with Duran was about two artists at work with the smaller artist destined to lose.
But his fight with Leonard? Leonard didn’t fight as much as he stole rounds with flurries before the bell. Hagler lost the title to Leonard in a disputed decision. When Leonard refused to give Hagler a rematch, Hagler retired in disgust.
“If they cut my bald head open, they will find one big boxing glove,” Hagler once said. “That’s all I am. I live it.’’
That’s what casual fans will remember, the bald weaponized head and the southpaw stance, the 160-pound body of muscled slabs always in shape, always moving forward with danger in his hands.
The heart. The will. The anger. The students of prizefighting will see how he’d throw righthand jabs to establish a pattern, then slip inside, turn and change leads from southpaw to orthodox, , confusing his opponent.
The head fake. A shoulder fake. The knockout.
He had 52 knockouts over a 14-year career, ending with a record of 62-3-2. The best part? He left the business with his brains intact to become an action movie actor in Italy. When asked to name his favorite actor, Hagler said, “Bob Hope and Lassie.”
Joyce Carol Oates, the prolific essayist, novelist and short story writer, was drawn to prizefighting as a child, watching with her father. Her book “On Boxing” should be on the shelf of every thinking fan.
“Boxing was part of my childhood,” she explained. “It was an important part of that working-class background. And for me it raised all kinds of questions about masculinity. What does it mean to be a man? The questions are unanswerable but provocative. I was fascinated by boxing.”
When “On Boxing” was published in 1987, women were not accepted as prizefighters. Women are accepted now, and they sell tickets and draw fans. But what you need to know about prizefighters isn’t about gender. What you need to know about prizefighters is that few, if any, were pampered as kids.
The child with the golden arm for baseball or football is pampered. Child basketball prodigies are pampered, filled with visions of bling and big cars and that big house with the infinity pool.
Not prizefighters. No one tells them they’re special. If they’re talented enough, lucky enough, mean enough, they end up telling themselves.
In “On Boxing,” Oates doesn’t think of prizefighting as a sport. And she doesn’t think of it as a metaphor.
“If you have seen 500 boxing matches,” she writes in her book, “you have seen 500 boxing matches, and their common denominator, which surely exists, is not of primary interest to you.”
She quotes Catholic writer, Flannery O’Connor, who said, “If the host is only a symbol, I’d say the hell with it.”
I would agree with Oates and O’Connor.
In an interview with ESPN, trainer Teddy Atlas says that Hagler’s value increases in our day of flash and “neon talent.”
“Hagler didn’t come up with a silver spoon. He had no spoon. He had those wooden things they gave you from the Good Humor truck,” Atlas said.
Hagler wasn’t pampered coming up. The Brockton, Massachusetts-based fighter took on Philadelphia middleweights in their hometown, where every fight is a war.
“Because he insisted on it,” Atlas said. “He wanted to know. He wanted to forge himself in fire. He was steel. He made himself that kind of man. Didn’t have a gold medal, big promoters giving him money, all he had was the desire to be the best.”
Every fighter brings all they have into the ring. As Oates writes, all is exposed, “including secrets about themselves they never knew.”
Marvelous Marvin Hagler’s secret? Courage, iron will and the skill of a great champion.
And the bell rings 10.