Fate Played Dirty Trick on Hagler

If Gene Tunney had never fought Jack Dempsey, who would ever have heard of him?

What if Gentleman Jim Corbett had never boxed John L. Sullivan? Suppose Joe Frazier had never met Muhammad Ali?

Would any or all of them have been a cipher in boxing history?

Would it have been enough for Rocky Marciano to knock out Joe Walcott--or even Ezzard Charles or Roland LaStarza? Didn’t he have to KO Joe Louis to ensure his place in pugilism?

Marvin Hagler is the undisputed middleweight champion of the world. He may be, pound for pound and punch for punch, the best fighter in the ring today.

But he got a rotten break in history. Fate played a lousy trick on him. He never got to fight the big one.

He beat Vito Antuofermo. He knocked out Fulgencio Obelmejias. He destroyed Mustafa Hamsho, Wilford Scypion and Juan Roldan. He had no trouble at all with Tony Sibson or Alan Minter. He even beat Hit Man Hearns.

In his own mind, he should be a fistic legend. He should go down with the Manassa Mauler, the Brown Bomber, or maybe at least the Toy Bulldog.

The facts are, though, that he had to go to court to change his own name, adding Marvelous to the Marvin Hagler part.

Most pugs let the sportswriters do that for them. Dempsey never needed a lawyer to become the Manassa Mauler. Mickey Walker never had to copyright the Toy Bulldog. Everybody knew Norman Selby was the Real McCoy.

It’s not that Marvin wasn’t bloody Marvelous. He played the part. He shaved his pate, grew a goatee, practiced his glower--and incidentally knocked silly everyone they put in front of him.

It didn’t matter. In the public mind at the time, the champion was the sweet-swinging Olympian, Sugar Ray Leonard, who came cloaked in the flag and a famous nickname he didn’t need a judge to get for him.

Marvin Hagler, on the other hand, came into focus as the brute. That other guy. Whatsisname with the Yul Brynner haircut.

When Sugar Ray Leonard got a detached retina, he short-circuited two careers--his and Hagler’s.

It was as if Dempsey got hit by a bus on his way to sign for Tunney, as if Jeffries declined to come out of retirement for Jack Johnson. It was anti-history. Even Larry Holmes got an overage Ali into the ring with him to sweeten his career.

For Hagler, it was a question of respect. A kid growing up in the mean streets of Newark and the outskirts of Boston, Marvin skipped the lace curtain path of the Olympics, the yellow brick road to fame and TV riches, in favor of the club fight trek through the smokers and leaky gyms of rural New England.

“We get hundreds of kids come in the gym to be fighters,” recalls Goody Petronelli, the Brockton trainer to whom Hagler first went. “As soon as they get a black eye or cut lip they go back to stealing hubcaps. Marvin was different. He kept coming back. He wanted to learn. He took his lumps and came back for more.”

Marvin was a blue-collar fighter. His style was early wrecking crew. No one ever called him Sugar.

His trick was to bust up guys like a guy taking down apartment houses with a steel ball. It won fights but it didn’t sell tickets. Or bring sponsors running. Hagler might have been the best fighter in the country, but only 12 people knew it. Most of them were fighters who ducked him.

It was all going to be resolved. Sugar Ray Leonard was all set for a comeback, detached retina or no. A warmup fight and then Hagler. A 50-50 split of a $50-million gate.

The warmup fight cooked the goose. Sugar Ray Leonard won. But he got knocked down in the fourth round. It was decided there were easier ways for him to go blind than fighting Marvin Hagler.

Leonard went into broadcasting, and Hagler went back to fighting in Worcester. When he beat Thomas Hearns, he thought he ought to belong to the ages. But Sugar Ray Leonard had beaten Thomas Hearns.

It was a question of respect. Hagler felt he didn’t get any. He stood up at a press conference here the other day to complain that he was the champion nobody knows.

“I waited for years for Muhammad Ali to move over,” he said. “I waited for Sugar darling to move over. Now, I’m here and everybody says, ‘Yeah, but can he beat Mugabi?’ ”

The promoter, Bob Arum, tried to soothe him. “You’re the king of the ring now,” he told him.

Hagler looked unconvinced. “ Now , you tell me,” he sniffed.

What will the John Mugabi fight Monday night do for Hagler’s reputation, his place in history? Is it the big one at last? Or just another club fight in Holyoke?

Marvin can only hope it does for him what a similar fight did for Jack Dempsey in 1923. That fight made Dempsey America’s hero.

A series of lackluster fights plus an uncertain reputation lingering from the World War I draft dogged Dempsey when he signed to fight an unknown and untested foreigner from South America, Luis Angel Firpo. The promoter, Tex Rickard, worried himself sick that Firpo would disgrace him.

Instead, Firpo knocked Dempsey out of the ring and, when Jack climbed back in to KO the Argentine, he endeared himself forever to his countrymen.

Marvin Hagler is at a similar crossroads. The proposition at Caesars Palace Monday night is simple: If John Mugabi is good enough, he--and Marvin--can finally make the world forget Sugar Ray Leonard. If he’s too good, he can make the world forget Marvin Hagler. Again.