Yet in the ring after his defeat of Davey Moore, it must have become evident to Duran that Hagler was not much bigger than he was. Though he had a five-inch longer reach and was three years younger, he stood only five feet nine. Conversely, while there was nothing about Roberto Duran that should have concerned Hagler, something did. It might have been the history of violence and comebacks, or the effrontery of the man, Duran’s air of unpredictability and danger. It might have been the mystique, the eyes, whatever, but Duran did something to Hagler that nobody thought he could do in or out of the ring. People wondered what a stubby 160-pounder who started the profession at 118-pounds was going to do to a powerful middleweight whose resume consisted of lopsided victories in a division devoid of top-flight contenders.
While Duran was loud, bodacious in his movements, tactless in his mannerisms, Hagler was the silent stalker, content to shuffle, move, jab, all the while taking a piece of his opponent with each round. His style was tactical, exact. No one left a Hagler fight dazzled by his footwork or even his one-punch power, but they marveled at his toughness, technique and generalship. Hagler fought to win, not to impress, and that didn’t always appease fight fans. Former Duran trainers Brown and Arcel knew his capabilities, and either out of a respect for Roberto’s ring genius or a belief that Hagler was overrated, both trainers gave the Panamanian an edge.
Duran was his first truly great opponent. People would remember this, he thought, the day he took down the legend and shoved him so far into retirement that they would only let him back for a Hall of Fame induction. To increase the incentive, Duran was going for records this time around. If he defeated Hagler, he would be the first boxer to win four titles in different weight classes.
Duran’s entourage, with a few new faces including training physician Dr Robert Paladino, arrived in Palm Springs, California, on November 1. While training for the bout, Duran found himself in the sights of a famous Hollywood sex symbol, who came to his training session and would sit ringside on fight night. The pneumatic blonde actress snapped photo after photo of Duran but apparently the actress wanted more than pictures. “She was there with a camera but she definitely wanted to fuck him,” said former manager Mike Acri. “When I told Roberto, he looked at her and said, ‘She too skinny.’ I was thinking, look at this girl, too skinny? But those Latins love big asses. Roberto loved big asses, and black girls.”
Duran was solid with Felicidad but he could have easily ended up with someone else. “In Las Vegas, he met a very pretty Cuban woman who loved him very much,” recalled his mother Clara. “She was called Silvia Garcia. She worked in a hotel. I do not know what happened to Duran, why he did not return to her later. She was a very good woman. She used to send me pretty presents from the States. They lived together for some time, but then they separated. After that, Roberto met Felicidad.” Mireya added: “He has a daughter called Dalia, and had also one with a Cuban woman.”
A story made waves in local papers that Duran and Hagler had a less than cordial introduction days before the fight. Both camps met by chance on the Dunes Hotel golf course and Hagler apparently put up his arms and made a point not to look Duran’s way as they crossed paths. To Duran’s followers, the gesture was a clear sign that Hagler was intimidated. Hagler seemed to hold a respect for Duran that belied his usual contempt for his opponents. “I think Duran’s already starting to get to Hagler psychologically,’’ said Angelo Dundee a week before the fight. “He knows how to psych guys out before the fight.’’
Having himself nixed a mega-fight with Hagler, Ray Leonard weighed in on the subject: “I expect Duran to fight Hagler the same way I would have fought Hagler, the same way I fought Duran in our second fight,” he told a reporter. “Box him, go to the body. Not toe-to-toe, but test him at times. If he makes a mistake, jump on him, stand there and punch, then get out. You can’t be one-dimensional against Hagler, your mind must be a sophisticated computer. Just react. You can’t stop and think or he’ll be all over you.’’
The thirty-two-year-old Duran may have been the WBA junior middleweight champion but Hagler, twenty-nine, had cleaned out the competition in his divison. Hagler was fighting the first of his two-fight contract with Top Rank Inc. The fight was held in a sold-out crowd of 15,200 in the outside arena at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, and shown in close to 400 closed-circuit locations in fifty countries. Ring magazine polled twenty-five boxing insiders and not one predicted a Duran victory.
During the official press conference, Duran offered to fight Hagler “right now, why wait?” To which Hagler responded, “I thought the man couldn’t speak English.” Though both seemed confident, Duran looked in charge. One reporter covering the pre-fight hype noted that Hagler had become a guest at Roberto’s fight.
“I think beating Davey Moore proved to people and proved to me that I still have all my skills,’’ Duran told a reporter. “I still have my power and my speed and most of all, my experience. I think the key to beating Hagler is to get inside and I’m smart enough to know how to do it. With someone with his height and reach, you have to get to his body. He’ll try to work his jab but he can’t keep me off. I’ll get inside and once I do, I’ll prove to Marvin Hagler that I can punch with the middleweights. Hagler hasn’t been tested in years. Nobody’s hit him. I’m going to hit him. We’ll find out if he can take a real punch.’’
Marvin countered, “He likes to brawl and maul but I don’t intend letting him get close to me. I can box, I’ve proved that to people, and I’m going to box Roberto Duran. I’m going to pop away at him and keep him off balance. I’ll be sticking him with the jab and when I see the opportunity, I’m going to nail him with combinations. I really want to bust him up. The more his people talk and the more they call me names, the more I get up, the more damage I want to do. The thing about Roberto Duran is that he’s not afraid to get hit and that will be his downfall. I plan on busting him up so bad he won’t be able to go back to his division and defend his title. I want to retire Roberto Duran.’’
The 3-1 betting line in Hagler’s favor before the fight moved to 7-2 on fight night, November 10, 1983. The champion had won fifty-seven and drawn two of his sixty-one bouts, with forty-eight stoppages. A stellar line-up of former champs were introduced before the bout: Jake LaMotta, Kid Gavilan, Gene Fullmer, Carmen Basilio, Joey Maxim. The judges chosen by the WBA committee and Elias Cordoba were Guy Jutras of Canada, Ove Oveson of Denmark, and Yasuku Yoshida of Japan. The crowd dripped in wealth. Fifteen-dollar Duran T-shirts easily outsold Hagler shirts. Buglers blared the entry of the boxers, Duran to the Rocky theme tune, Hagler to “Stars And Stripes Forever.”
The preliminaries were drawn out, with the boxers waiting in the ring for over twenty minutes in cool evening air, but Duran seemed to savor the atmosphere, bouncing around the ring and smiling. The combatants jawed at each other during pre-fight introductions, but seconds later they quickly touched gloves, a rarity for Hagler.
The chess match commenced at the opening bell. Even the casual fight fan could have predicted that the taller Hagler would use his reach advantage to good effect. Duran came in prepared, without the roll of body fat that occasionally surrounded his midsection. Hagler, one of the hardest trainers in the game, had his usual rocklike look.
Coming off thirty-two straight victories, Hagler landed the first significant punch when he sneaked an uppercut under Duran’s guard in the second round. Hagler landed it when he needed to. Often, Hagler set it up by placing his left glove on top of Duran’s head, and then sticking the right uppercut into the base of Duran’s beard. At the end of the initial stanza, Duran landed a straight right on Hagler’s temple, creating a response from the crowd as if it were performing the wave.
The bell ended the second round, and both fighters stopped throwing punches. In an unnatural move, Hagler curled up both gloves against his head to protect himself as the fighters separated. Instead of turning around and heading back to the corner or even throwing a punch after the bell to send a
message, Hagler was more concerned with keeping his guard up. It became a theme of the evening.
Duran stepped around a huge Hagler left to start the third round, and delivered a compact left hook to the champ’s midsection. It didn’t hurt Hagler, but reminded the southpaw that he had everything to lose in the fight. Since Hagler wasn’t pressing, Duran was able to conserve his energy, and that was never a good sign for any of his opponents. Both fighters would tease the crowd with a brief middle-of-the-ring duel toward the end of the third, but then Hagler responded to his inner clock.
In the fifth, Duran injured his right hand, which began to swell between the first and second knuckles down to his wrist. Yet he never once gave away his injury, not even grimacing as he continued to land full-blooded rights to Hagler’s shaven skull. Gutsing it out, he dismissed the pain to open up in the final fifteen seconds of the fifth. First, he nailed Hagler with a straight right as the southpaw was throwing a jab. Then in one beautiful sequence, Duran closed the gap and landed a right to the body and left hook to the head.
Perhaps because booing had started around the arena, Hagler came alive in the sixth. He shot his jab into Duran’s face, switched from southpaw to orthodox and back again – he could box equally as well in either stance – and landed a hard left hook. After a Duran right harmlessly bounced off his shaven skull, Hagler shot an effective right cross. Moving now with purpose, Hagler sunk in three left hooks to the body, pushed Duran against the ropes, reverted to southpaw, moved to the middle of the ring, turned conventional again and then banged Duran with a right cross that stunned him for the first time. It was the best punch of the fight. After motioning Duran to the ropes and feeling the wheeze of his breaths on his shoulders in a clinch, Hagler landed a final right uppercut before the bell sounded. No longer was this Hagler covering up as he spun to the corner. Hagler placed his bald head in Duran’s chest, landed a clean right hook, followed by a left hook to close out the seventh round. Duran ended the round in classic gunslinger pose but his courage hadn’t been enough to win him the round.
Those close to the middleweight champ knew he had to go after Duran and he finally complied. Staring at Hagler with exhaustion pasted on his face in the ninth, Duran, mouth agape, took three straight jabs. Duran had started fast but was tiring. At his age, it was impossible to keep up the pace. He continually shook his arms as if pleading with them to comply. No discernible response came as Hagler reverted back to his technical dismantling rather than follow-up the previous battering.
Commentator Al Bernstein noted in the eleventh that “something might be going on in Hagler’s mind” as he questioned the hesitant nature of the champion. Hagler moved inside in the twelfth, where he’d been dominant despite his long reach, and bullied Duran. With his hands down by his side, Duran put on his first real scowl of the night in attempt to mock Hagler. It was bravado from a man who managed to provide brief sparks but little more. Moments later they were finally in the trenches again and squaring off as Hagler motioned Duran forward after nailing him with a right hand. Duran landed a straight right followed by a nice uppercut as Hagler motioned to his face for more. A cut, which was swelling, appeared underneath Hagler’s left eye from absorbing straight right hands. Dipping into his broad repertoire, Hagler displayed a straight left, right jab and another of his pinpoint right uppercuts to best Duran in the thirteenth. As the round closed, Hagler wagged his tongue at Duran, a sign that even the serious stalker could have a little fun.
Yet sensationally the official scores had Duran ahead. Going into the fourteenth round, judge Jutras had it 124-all, Yoshida scored it 127-126 for Duran, and Oveson also had it by a point, 125-124, for Duran. He had to win only one of the remaining two rounds to pull off one of the greatest upsets in history.
Hagler showed his mettle. After landing six consecutive shots to start the fourteenth, he then obliged the WBA judges with short, pulverizing right hooks to Duran’s hanging head, and continued to press in a workmanlike manner. By outpunching Duran in the final stanzas, Hagler would leave the judges no choice. It was clear at that point why Duran only occasionally took the risks that defined him in previous bouts. As timid as Hagler was in certain spots, he was just too big and strong.
Duran came out for the final round pounding his chest and sticking out his chin. Nevertheless, Hagler now had a slight lead: one point, one point, and two points on the three scorecards. He padded the lead with an assortment of punches, which included three uppercuts along the ropes, a straight left, and a short right hook, laughing inside as Duran couldn’t come close to turning any of his punches. The fight ended with Hagler bundling Duran against the ropes. As the bell sounded, Duran squatted and glared menacingly at Hagler, as he had after his first fight with Leonard. He spat glorious defiance to the end, while Hagler brooded, blood seeping from a cut around his swollen left eye.
As the men waited in the ring, Duran walked over to Hagler, put his fist in the air and berated him. Hagler, who picked up a purse between $8 and $9 million, answered with his hands toward the sky as the scores were read in his favor: Jutras, 144-142, Yoshida, 146-145, and Oveson, 144-143. Had Duran stolen just one of the last two rounds, he would have won. It would have been a bad call, for all the courage and skill of his performance. Many believed Duran’s aura swayed the judges to make the fight much closer than it was. “I give Duran a lot of credit but you got to give me credit, too,” Hagler said afterwards. “Come on man, you gotta give it to me. That man’s a legend.”
Judge Yoshida had six rounds even, prompting Bert Sugar to quip, “The Jap thinks this guy ‘Even’ is now champion of the world.” British writer Hugh McIlvaney suggested he “might have scored Pearl Harbour a draw.” There was a huge disparity between the judges’ scorecards and the overall feeling of the sportswriters: Jerry Lisker, New York Post, 11-4; Dick Young, New York Post, 10-4-1; Pete Axthelm, Newsweek, 9-5-1; Phil Pepe, New York Daily News, 11-3-1; Stan Hochman, Philadelphia Daily News, 8-5-2; John Schulian, Chicago Sun-Times, 8-5-2; Joe Gergen, Newsday, 10-4-1; Bob Verdi, Chicago Tribune, 9-4-2; Will Grimsley, Associated Press, 8-7, all for Hagler. The morning headlines ranged from “Hagler is still champ, but invincible no more,” to “Mere Survival Isn’t a Revival for Duran,” to “Hagler Survives Duran.”
Radio analyst Gil Clancy managed to grab the loser afterwards. “I was the only guy he would talk to after the fight. He said, ‘Popi, muy cansado.’ He said he was very tired. I had him ahead going into the thirteenth round and then Hagler came back to win the last couple rounds.”
The consensus seemed to be that Hagler deserved to win but Duran was a moral victor. “Hagler was intimidated by Duran,” said trainer Emanuel Steward. “I don’t know why, but he just was. Duran got to him.” Had he stolen one of the last two rounds, the challenger would have become the first man in history to rule four divisions. “Duran Steals All The Glory” was the headline in the British trade magazine Boxing News. “The stigma of the ‘no más’ fiasco in New Orleans in the Ray Leonard rematch is erased forever, and his place with the ring’s immortals is assured,” wrote its editor, Harry Mullan. “Hagler’s post-fight comment, that ‘If I’d had one more round I could have knocked him out, but all I wanted to do was to win, and I did’ provided a precise illustration of the difference between these two modern greats. Hagler, the bleak professional, had been to work: but Duran, wonderful, unconquerable, fiery Duran, had been to war.”
A lot of spectators felt Hagler let Duran off the hook by thinking and not acting. He was too methodical in his approach. Against Duran, he rarely made a move without calculating the repercussions. “If Marvin had put more pressure on early,” admitted Pat Petronelli, “it wouldn’t have gone fifteen.” Adding insult to the criticisms of his performance, the WBC withdrew its recognition of Hagler as champion because the bout had been fought over fifteen rounds rather than the new WBC maximum of twelve. It was a typically churlish action on the part of one of the governing bodies, who often seemed less concerned with governan
ce than with making money from sanctioning fees and exercising their dubious authority.
“A lot of people think his best fight was with Leonard, and I was there in Montreal. But that is a personal opinion. I thought that was his best fight, right there,” said Luis Spada of the Hagler fight. “After the thirteenth round, he was one point ahead. You need to take into consideration that Roberto had the body of a lightweight. To fight with middleweights that was something else. Duran was outboxing him even though Hagler was taller and had a longer reach. He learned over the years with Ray Arcel and Freddie Brown to be a complete boxer. In that fight he was like a helicopter. You watch that fight and sometimes he was over-boxing, but he was punching to the body then moving to the side beautifully.”
Hagler tried to justify his risk-free strategy after the bout. “I fought him at half-distance,” he told a boxing writer. “I was waiting for him to unload so I could score on him. Whichever hand he unloaded with I was ready to counter. I was beating him without mixing it up too much. You don’t barrel in on a guy like Duran.” A commentator reiterated what many believed to be true: Hagler won the fight, but Duran won the night. “I was a little tight. It wasn’t the atmosphere. It was inside. It was between Roberto and myself,” said Hagler. Still, the Marvelous One would have a chance to win back the fans against Thomas Hearns.
“Everyone was saying he was a destroyer,” Duran said. “But when he hit me it didn’t do a thing to me. But I was scared to throw my right hand.” He was still ebullient at a press conference the morning after. Facially unmarked and sporting a yachting cap, he rubbed together the fingers on his swollen right hand and joked, “No good punching, plenty good counting money.” Hearing of a Hagler complaint that he had been thumbed, Duran burst out laughing.
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