Marvin Hagler, middleweight boxing's towering champion, dies aged 66
Marvelous Marvin Hagler stopped Thomas Hearns in a fight that lasted less than eight minutes yet was so epic that it still lives in boxing lore. Two years later he was so disgusted after losing a decision to Sugar Ray Leonard – stolen by the judges, he claimed – that he never fought again.
One of the great middleweights in boxing history, Hagler died Saturday at the age of 66. His wife, Kay, announced his death on the Facebook page for Hagler’s fans.
“I am sorry to make a very sad announcement,” she wrote. “Today unfortunately my beloved husband Marvelous Marvin passed away unexpectedly at his home here in New Hampshire. Our family requests that you respect our privacy during this difficult time.”
Hagler fought on boxing’s biggest stages against its biggest names, as he, Leonard, Hearns and Roberto Duran dominated the middleweight classes during a golden time for boxing in the 1980s. Quiet with a brooding public persona, Hagler fought 67 times over 14 years as a pro out of Brockton, Massachusetts, finishing 62-3-2 with 52 knockouts.
“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.”
Hagler was unmistakable in the ring, fighting out of a southpaw stance with his bald head glistening in the lights. He was relentless and he was vicious, stopping opponent after opponent during an eight year run that began with a disputed draw against Vito Antuofermo in 1979 that he later avenged.
He fought with a proverbial chip on his shoulder, convinced that boxing fans and promoters alike didn’t give him his proper due. He was so upset that he wasn’t introduced before a 1982 fight by his nickname of Marvelous that he went to court to legally change his name.
“He was certainly one of the greatest middleweights ever but one of the greatest people that I’ve ever been around and promoted,” promoter Bob Arum said. “He was a real man, loyal and just fantastic person.”
Any doubts Hagler wasn’t indeed Marvelous were erased on a spring night in 1985. He and Hearns met in one of the era’s big middleweight clashes outdoors at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and when the opening bell rang they traded punches for three minutes in an opening round many consider the best in boxing history.
Hagler would go on to stop Hearns in the third round, crumpling him to the canvas with a barrage of punches even as blood poured out of a large gash on his forehead that nearly caused the referee to stop the fight earlier in the round.
“When they stopped the fight to look at the cut, I realized they might be playing games and I wasn’t going to let them take the title away,? Hagler said later. “It was a scary feeling. I thought, ‘Why are they stopping this fight?’ I didn’t realize I was bleeding. It wasn’t in my eyes. Then I knew I had to destroy this guy.”
Arum said Hagler simply willed himself to victory over Hearns, whose big right hand was feared in the division but couldn’t keep Hagler at bay.
“That was an unbelievable fight,” Arum said. “Probably the greatest fight ever.”
Hearns said Saturday he was thinking about Hagler and their historic fight. Hagler wore a baseball cap with the word ‘War’ while promoting it while on a 23-city tour with Hearns that Arum said made the fighters despise each other before they even entered the ring.
“I can’t take anything away from him,” Hearns told the Associated Press. “His awkwardness messed me up but I can’t take anything away from him. He fought his heart out and we put on a great show for all time.”
Hagler would fight only two more times, stopping John Mugabi a year later and then meeting Leonard, who was coming off a three-year layoff from a detached retina, in his final fight in 1987. Hagler was favored going into the fight and many thought he would destroy Leonard but Leonard had other plans.
While Hagler pursued him around the ring, Leonard fought backing up, flicking out his left jab and throwing combinations that didn’t hurt Hagler but won him points on the ringside scorecards. Still, when the bell rang at the end of the 12th round, many thought Hagler had pulled out the fight only to lose a controversial split decision.
Hagler, who was paid $19m, left the ring in disgust and never fought again. He moved to Italy to act, and never really looked back.
“I feel fortunate to get out of the ring with my faculties and my health,” he said a year later.
Hagler took the long route to greatness, fighting mostly in the Boston area before finally getting his chance at the 160lb title in 1979 against Antuofermo as a co-main event with Leonard fighting Wilfredo Benitez on the same card. Hagler bloodied Antuofermo and seemed to win the fight, but when the scorecards were tallied he was denied the belt with a draw.
Hagler would travel to London the next year to stop Alan Minter to win the title at Wembley Arena, and he held it for the next seven years before his disputed loss to Leonard.
Arum remembered being at a black tie event honoring top fighters a year later that was attended by both Hagler and Leonard, among others. He said Leonard came up to him and pointed to Hagler across the room and suggested he go talk to him about a rematch that would have earned both fighters unbelievable purses.
“I went over to Marvin and said Ray is talking about a rematch,” Arum said. “He glared at me as only Marvin could and said, ‘Tell Ray to get a life.”’
Hagler was born in Newark, New Jersey, and moved with his family to Brockton in the late 1960s. He was discovered as an amateur by the Petronelli brothers, Goody and Pat, who ran a gym in Brockton and would go on to train Hagler for his entire pro career.
He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame and World Boxing Hall of Fame in 1983.
Marvin Hagler, who has died aged 66, is recognised as one of boxing’s greatest champions, holding the world middleweight title from 1980 to 1987, but his fabled status is assured because of one never-to-be-forgotten night in the old open-air arena at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, in 1985, when he fought and defeated his great rival Thomas Hearns in one of the most thrilling contests the sport has ever produced.
Their meeting was marketed simply by the promoter Bob Arum as The Fight, though this astonishing contest became known as The War in the years thereafter. With both men casting caution to the wind, the normally slowstarting Hagler elected to meet the bigpunching “Hitman” Hearns head-on in an opening round of frightening ferocity.
Both men were landing huge punches, but when Hagler sustained a deep cut on his forehead in the third round it was clear the contest could not conceivably last the full 15 rounds. As blood gushed into Hagler’s eyes, the referee Richard Steele was forced to call the ringside doctor to examine the wound. When asked if he could see, Hagler replied: “I ain’t missing him, am I?” and this has become one of the great quotes of boxing folklore.
Realising he could lose his title because of the injury, Hagler detonated a massive right-hand punch on Hearns’s chin only seconds later, leaving the Detroit man face down on the canvas. Although Hearns somehow staggered to his feet, the referee ended the most dramatic three rounds of boxing most fans had ever witnessed.
Hagler was born in the poorest area of Newark, New Jersey, where he lived with his brother, Robbie, who also became a professional boxer, and four sisters. His father, Robert Sims, had walked out on the family, leaving his mother, Ida Mae Hagler, to raise the children. Caught up in the terrifying race riots that left 26 dead in Newark in 1967, and their tenement home all but destroyed, the Haglers relocated to Brockton, Massachusetts, where Marvin soon developed a love for boxing.
He told how he had walked into a gym run by Pat and Goody Petronelli in 1969, after being roughed up on the street by a young hard man who was a local boxer. His mission was to learn to fight, and soon his aptitude was clear as he won the US amateur national title in 1973, before turning professional later in the year.
Learning the hard way, taking fights against tough opponents for small financial reward, Hagler became something of an avoided man. As a southpaw, leading with the right hand instead of the normal left, he had an awkward style as well as a near freakish ability to take punches without them having any discernible effect. Two early defeats, on points, hardened his resolve.
One was against Willie Monroe, a fighter trained by the great heavyweight champion Joe Frazier. Hagler maintained he had been robbed and went on to win a rematch and then knock Monroe out in a third meeting. Hagler said Frazier had told him: “You have three strikes against you: you’re black, you’re southpaw and you’re good.”
Hagler kept winning, and two victories over the highly rated Englishman Kevin Finnegan, and another over the big punching Philadelphia favourite “Bad” Bennie Briscoe, earned him a contract with Arum, the top Las Vegasbased promoter.
His first challenge for a world title was in 1979 against the New York-based Italian Vito Antuofermo, which he believed he won but was given a divided decision draw. His next chance came the following year against Britain’s Alan Minter at Wembley. A hostile atmosphere had been stoked by Minter, by then the champion, saying he would never lose his title to a black man.
Minter was given a savage beating. The referee Carlos Berrocal halted the contest in the third round with Minter horribly cut around his eyes. Fleeing the ring, Hagler had to be shielded from bottles and glasses as he was pelted with missiles on one of British boxing’s most shameful nights.
He went on to successfully defend the title 12 times through one of the great eras for boxing and, more especially, the middleweight division. Among the defences were epic wins against the Panamanian Roberto Durán, the feared Ugandan puncher John Mugabi and Leicester’s Tony Sibson. But his run of success came to an end in 1987, against Sugar Ray Leonard. After 15 rounds, once again at Caesars
Palace, Leonard was awarded the judges’ verdict in a split decision.
Hagler never accepted that he lost the fight and he never returned to the ring. Experts are still split over whether or not Hagler should have won. Effectively, the smaller and quicker Leonard fought in eye-catching flurries, while Hagler landed the more telling blows. He was the aggressor throughout and dominated the latter stages of the contest.
His first marriage, to Bertha, with whom he had five children, Charelle, Celeste, James, Marvin Jr and Gentry, ended in 1990. He married again in 2000, to an Italian woman, Kay Guarrera, and they kept homes in Milan, where he had some success working in Italian films, and New Hampshire in the US.
Hagler had become irritated that ring announcers were not introducing him to the crowd using his nickname “Marvelous”, so he officially changed his name to Marvelous Marvin in 1982.
Although the Marvelous one was asked to return, amid much speculation that there would be a moneyspinning rematch with Leonard, his retirement proved to be permanent. Never the chosen one, and not given to colourful pre-fight hyperbole, he preferred to speak though his performances.
Perhaps, to quote another of his famous observations about earning millions of dollars after being born into poverty, life had become too comfortable. “It’s difficult to get up to do roadwork at five in the morning when you are sleeping in silk pyjamas.”
Hagler is survived by Kay. • Marvelous Marvin Hagler (Marvin Nathaniel Hagler), boxer, born 23 May 1954; died 13 March 2021
Jessica McCaskill backed up her claim to the undisputed welterweight championship in emphatic fashion on Saturday, defeating Cecilia Braekhus in a rematch that proved far more clear-cut than their first meeting.
Six months after McCaskill sprang a major upset with a narrow 10-round majority decision to capture Braekhus’s WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO titles at 147lbs, the American delivered a far more convincing performance in the return engagement.
While it wasn’t quite as one-sided as the official scores of 110-89, 99-90 and 98-91 might suggest, there was little question that McCaskill was the deserving winner. (The Guardian scored it 96-93 for McCaskill.)
McCaskill (10-2, 3 KOs), the 35-yearold banker from Chicago who balances her boxing career with a full-time job as a regulatory reporting analyst for brokerage giant RJ O’Brien & Associates, was the busier and more aggressive fighter from the opening bell.
Braekhus (36-2, 9 KOs) came on strong in the later rounds – not unlike their first meeting in Tulsa back in
August – but it wasn’t enough to overcome the champion’s insurmountable lead on the cards.
The fight served as the co-main event for Juan Francisco Estrada’s splitdecision victory over Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez in thriller to unify the WBC and WBA belts at 115lbs.
Estrada (42-3, 28 KOs) avenged his loss to Gonzalez in November 2012 by triumphing on two judges’ scorecards in a back-and-forth rematch. Estrada hung on despite a phenomenal finish in the 12th round by Gonzalez (50-3, 41 KOs), who buckled Estrada’s knees with a combination.
Judge David Sutherland scored it 115-113 for Estrada, and Carlos Sucre favored Estrada 117-111. Judge Jesse Reyes scored the bout 115-113 for Gonzalez.
Some fans at the American Airlines Center booed Mexico’s Estrada as he celebrated a victory over Nicaragua’s Gonzalez. Estrada called for a third bout with Gonzalez in his post-fight interview.