Back in the 1980’s, long before Willamette Week won a Pulitzer Prize, it was a small alternative newspaper operating on one wing and a lot of elbow grease in a medium-sized town in the mildew zone. The only reason the editor sent me to a huge boxing event in Las Vegas was because local fighter Andy Minsker was on the undercard. Turned out I didn’t get to see Minsker’s bout, so I set out to tell what it was like to be there. This ran on April 25, 1985.
The high voltage zing of a big fight is legendary. No Hollywood premier, no Broadway opening, no ticker-tape parade draws so widely and deeply from the glitter heart of America. Stars and pimps rub satin shoulders. Tycoons and bricklayers, high-priced hookers and righteous socialites, all flaunt their glad rags in identical excitement.
The outrageous extremes of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas have been the natural setting for a dozen Fights Of The Century, pulling crowds by air into this remote desert hot spot. The upcoming Hagler-Hearns fandango, set for April 15, is further complicated by a 35,000-member convention of broadcasters in town for the weekend to jam hotel rooms, snag traffic, and drive casino employees to hysterical ecstasies as the money rolls in. At least 30,000 people who do not have a ticket to see Hagler fight Hearns are trying to buy one.
Upstairs in his suite, Marvin Hagler is getting mean. This is not a simple task for a guy who is intelligent, healthy, kind, family-loving, and a millionaire. Hagler has developed his own system of mean meditation over the years. He puts himself into a discipline that he calls “jail.” He hasn’t seen his wife and four children for weeks. He will refuse to see them until after the fight. The hype, the TV commercials, the press conferences, and six weeks of seclusion in a Palm Springs training camp are behind him. Now, while the endless party of Las Vegas whoops at street level, the domed blue-collar samurai hones his Zen claws in games of backgammon, gin rummy and checkers with the Petronelli brothers, Pat and Goody.
These two stubborn New Englanders have been with Hagler since he was an intense eleven-year-old in their Brockton, Mass. gym. The Petronellis and one shaven-headed lawyer named Wainright are Hagler’s entire entourage. As fight time approaches, he shuns all other human contact. He stays alone, thinking and getting mean.
Downstairs in the red swarm of Caesar’s casino, a buzzing knot at one craps table is surrounded by uniformed security guards who keep the rubberneckers from pressing too close. With a dozen buddies to cheer him on, Thomas “Hit Man” Hearns rolls the dice, calling “Eight! Eight! Come on eight!” and turning his head away with a quick smile when eight fails to appear.
Deeper in Caesars’ maze, past Cleopatra’s Barge where the band plays, opposite the 30-foot marble copy of Michelangelo’s David, around a few corners from the life-size ghost-white statue of Joe Louis in marble trunks and boxing gloves, is the Sports Book, a room dedicated to the serious and scholarly forms of gambling. Multiple television screens and electronic tote boards entertain the audience studying racing sheets at individual desks. A 10-foot tote board announces odds on The Fight in glowing red.
At 10 p.m. on Saturday, the Caesars board shows Hagler with a slim 6 to 5 edge in steady betting. Heavyweight champion Larry Holmes has $5,000 on Hearns. Former Ring Magazine editor Bert Sugar and Sugar Ray Leonard also pick Hearns. Welterweight champ Donald Curry, ex-featherweight titan Sandy Saddler and Roberto Duran say Hagler will win.
The electric snake-town carnival is in full swing. The neon streets sizzle and jump with flesh made gaudy by the lights. At the airport, long lines of bag-burdened new arrivals wait to be ushered into cabs, limos and buses by frenzied shepherds. On the wide front steps of Caesars Palace, glittering crowds stand mesmerized by the turquoise glow that bathes the mammoth building and its surrounding fountains, sculptures and arching footbridges. Groups of satined and sequined tourists are scooped into taxis, but the bemused crowd never seems to grow smaller. The lines are bizarrely patient here. Even the prime-time rich are willing to wait in this leisure zone where hurry is from one pleasure to another. Only the taxis are genuinely furious in their zooming, and tales circulate of pedestrians smashed and forgotten in the crosswalks.
GAINFORD’S LAW (for successful fight promotion): It don’t matter how many seats you got. It’s how many asses you got in them seats that counts.
— George Gainford, manager and trainer of Sugar Ray Robinson
Caesars Palace has decided to set up the smaller of its portable bleacher arenas in the parking lot beside the tennis courts. Instead of the 30,000 seats available for the Holmes-Cooney fight a few years ago, only 15,128 tickets have been sold for Hagler vs. Hearns.
A Caesars spokesperson explains, “We decided to go for quality seating and raise the ticket prices so we could still make money. In the big stadium, half the people were so far away from the ring that they couldn’t see anything.”
There are a few, very few, $50 seats far up on the lip of the overnight arena, but the rest have gone for $200 or $400 or $500, with a resounding $600 price tag on the ringside seats. The fight has been sold out for weeks. By fight day the ringside seats will be netting $2,500 each from the scalpers.
The trouble is that there are not enough scalpers for this boxing match. People who would normally parlay a pair of tickets into a tidy profit at the expense of latecomers are stubbornly hanging on to the precious strips of cardboard. Big bucks won’t buy them. Fight buffs banking on the greed of scalpers are wandering the casinos in a desperate search. Even the scalpers want to see this fight.
An earnest business manager, hunched over a telephone in the casino office, dials number after number with the same litany: “Please tell Mr. Arum (or Mr. Greb or Mr. Superstar) that I am anxiously seeking tickets to the fight for Mr. Herb Alpert…. Yes, Mr. Herb Alpert…. Ah, I see…. Thank you, anyway.”
Las Vegas taxi driver Ray Luntz, swooping through the traffic circus of flesh and flash, rants at hilarious pedestrians and gripes. “Too much money! I saved a month for them ducats! A pair of $200 seats, me and the wife. So I pick up two jokers at the airport last night, and right away they wanta know have I got tickets. Sure, I say, double ducats a pair. They start trying to buy them off me. I’m no scalper! I wanted to go to the fight! But shit, my kid needs braces. These orthodontists you wouldn’t believe. I’m driving and saying nah, nah. All of a sudden I hear these guys offering me 800 bucks apiece for my goddamn tickets. So, I figure, what the hell. Me an Lucy will go to the closed circuit show and let Marvelous Marv and the Hit Man fix the kid’s teeth.”
“Including the TV and radio technicians,” says the Caesars spokesperson, “we issued close to 800 press passes.” The plastic-coated passes are equipped with a pin to stick into a shirt or lapel, and they come in blue (for seating at ringside), green (10 inches of bleacher in the farthest, highest row) and yellow (admission to the closed-circuit showing in Caesars Pavilion right behind the bleachers). Beige means you are a technician and are free to plug into Caesars electricity and wander anywhere as long as you don’t sit down. The priorities are established by circulation, daily status and raw pull. The Oregonian is at ringside. Willamette Week is a yellow card.
Caesars Pavilion is a corrugated metal shed the size of an airplane hangar. The steel spider web of the arena bleachers looms over one end. Just inside, a dozen mobile rooms on wheels have doors labeled with names of the prelim fighters. The Hagler and Hearns portable dressing rooms are tucked away in back and are constantly guarded. The middle of the shed is set up as a kind of theater with the holy-of-holies scale for the weigh-in on a stage, screens for the closed circuit broadcast hanging from the ceiling, and more bleachers.
The far end of the shed, closed off by black plastic curtains like a thousand unrolled garbage bags, is the press section. Long rows of folding tables and chairs give it the look of a school cafeteria except for the dozens of telephones and six high-resolution television monitors. One corner boasts tables loaded with plastic-wrapped sandwiches, bottomless coffee urns, bins of chips and popcorn, and ice. Three times a day, a forklift delivers cases of soft drinks for stowing in the two big refrigerators.
LAS VEGAS: Monday, April 15—The Fight
Income-tax day. On this day in 1865 at 7:22 A.M., President Abraham Lincoln died of the gunshot wound inflicted by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater the night before. On this day in 1912, the British luxury liner Titanic sank in the North Atlantic after striking an iceberg. And on this day in 1920, a robbery at the Slater and Merrill Shoe Co. in South Braintree, Mass. resulted in the deaths of the paymaster and a guard. Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were later convicted of the murders and executed.
The 8 a.m. weigh-in ceremony goes off without a fuss in front of several hundred reporters still hung over from the big poolside party last night. Hagler weighs 159 and one-quarter pounds. Hearns squeaks in at 159 and three-quarters. Thousands sigh with relief. The prelim fighters step up onto the scales for a dwindling audience and by 9 a.m. everybody is on the way to breakfast.
The sky is an aluminum pan with one polished spot—probably the sun. The 90-degree glaze of the weekend is gone. A stiff breeze kicks sand in from the parking lot. The temperature hovers in the high 70s.
Caesars Sports Book is bedlam. Lines of bettors coil toward the entrances. Local TV news crews hover at the windows focusing floodlights on the calm clerks who are taking in money and handing out slips. Brooks Brothers suits can be heard pontificating predictably, “The big M is not and never has been a one-punch knockout specialist!” And, “Hearns is a one-handed fighter, agreed. But consider that one hand!”
High-energy talk ripples the line as neophytes and aficionados make their views known. Pedal pushers and shorts vie for betting room with blazers and tweeds. Two deaf couples, chic in white linen, sign vigorously to each other in obvious debate over the relative merits of Hagler’s southpaw stance and Hearns’ low and elongated left hand. The four hop and jostle in the line as they demonstrate their points vehemently.
The red-lit letters of the fight tote board are steady as each bet cancels out the one before. It’s 6 to 5 for Hagler.
Las Vegas is spinning in the fight whirlwind. Next door to Caesars, the Dunes offers films of the great fights of both Hagler and Hearns 16 hours a day. Booths all over town are hawking T-shirts, caps, balloons, souvenir programs and glossy photos. Street-corner entrepreneurs hold up red Hagler or white Hearns shirts to the passing cars. Every waitress, dealer and slot mechanic has an opinion.
“Too much power. Hearns’ right hand all the way,” says cabby Ray Luntz. “And too goddamnned much money. Back in ‘71 when I fought Jose Napoles—I was a last-minute sub at the Olympic and he knocked me out in the seventh, but I didn’t have the sense to fall until the ninth—I got a big 15,000 bucks. Why should these two guys be walking off with a minimum $5 million each?”
“Why the hell not?” hollers the tipsy fare in the back seat. “If a coupla million bozos wanta pay 20 bucks a pop to see these guys on closed-circuit TV, who else should get the bread? Bob Arum? The TV network? The Feds? The average boxer is still getting paid the same $200 for four rounds, $500 for six, that they got back in friggin’ 1940! Give it to the fighters!”
By 3 p.m. on fight day, a crisis has developed in the press section of Caesars Pavilion. All the soda pop is gone. The ice in the tubs has melted. The ham, turkey, ham and cheese, and tuna sandwiches normally spread profusely on trays are all gone. Only drab, dry cheese sandwiches remain. The caterers and the forklift driver have been busy supplying the dozens of concession stands set up around the arena.
At 3:30 p.m. the forklift finally appears, honking its way through a crowd of parched reporters desperate enough to unload the cases themselves.
By 4 p.m. all the ringside and pressroom phones have been checked and are functioning for direct reporting to dailies and wire services. Portable word processors have been plugged into ringside wiring. The pressroom crowd dwindles as the blue-card folk head for ringside and the green-card holders begin their climb of the bleachers. The yellow-card holders pull their chairs up close to the six high-resolution color monitors feeding directly off the ESPN broadcast. The TV crew is running final tests. An announcer does cruelly accurate Howard Cosell imitations to the delight of the pressroom.
It’s time for the prelim fights. The ticket holders trickle in slowly. Typically the cheap bleacher seats fill up first. At 4:50 p.m. Daryl Chambers, the 22–2, 16 KO progeny of Detroit’s Kronk Gym, steps in for 8 rounds with 154-pound slugger Luis Santana from Los Angeles. Halfway through the third round the corner men are debating whether to carry Chambers back to the dressing room or let him walk.
A reporter wandering through the dim aisles in the dressing-room area gets caught in the winner’s celebration. The beaming, burly Santana races through the shed door, grabs the reporter in a sweat-soaked hug and plants a kiss on the journalistic cheek before scampering off to the showers. Hours later the reporter finds a broad smear of dried blood coating jaw and neck and realizes it is the residue of Daryl Chambers’ cut.
5:30 p.m. Portland featherweight Andy Minsker fights John Watkins of Los Angeles in a six-rounder that frustrates the pressroom spectators because it’s not televised. Attempts to peer through the chain-link fence are obstructed by a view of legs and bleachers. Formerly cordial security women, now scrutinizing tickets for authenticity, aren’t joking any more. A nightstick rattling the wire mesh in front of investigative noses suffices to send the most ardent Minsker followers back to sulk in front of the uncommunicative tubes.
The closed-circuit broadcast is set to begin at 6 p.m. and the green-card holders are drifting back into the pressroom. “You’d need a telescope to see anything from up there in the gods’ section of the bleachers. These TVs are definitely the way to cover this fight.”
The green-card carriers say Minsker stopped his man in the fourth, but they don’t know how he looked doing it.
6 p.m. The closed-circuit broadcast begins and the Kronk Gym has a winner. Light heavyweight Ricky Womack decisions David Vedder.
In the pressroom another load of soda pop arrives. On the TV screens the sky appears to darken with a rain menace. Hector Camacho appears at ringside in a shining blue-sequined suit. Larry Holmes arrives soon after and sits beside him.
Announcer Curt Gowdy explains that the intrigue of Hagler vs. Hearns is in the evenness of the match, even though Marvelous Marv and the Hit Man lack personal charisma. Hisses spout from the pressroom assembly. “Charisma my royal Irish arse!” howls an indignant Bostonian. “Look into the deep, dark eyes of The Bald One and say that, you Dowdy Barstard!”
The TV crew in the shed is poised, waiting for Hagler. “Is that him? Is he coming? Don’t step on those wires, please. Is that him?” Two false alarms later, a smallish figure trots around the corner, robed in black, a hood hiding his face. The Petronellis are on either side of him, a phalanx of uniformed guards around him. Hagler moves fast and is gone, sucked into the great shout from the arena.
The folks in the pressroom gallop back to their TV sets. There they stand at last—Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns. They are as like as a pit bull and a greyhound. Their goatees are the only similarity. They are frighteningly beautiful. These two are the cause of all this fuss. They have drawn thousands from across the continent. The idea of this moment is earning millions of dollars for many people other than themselves.
Through all the weeks of hype, they have become as familiar to us as the daily comic strips. We have talked them into easy patterns. Hagler is an intelligent counterpuncher and has a great chin. Hearns has one of the great long-distance jabs of all time, and his right hand is the hammer of god. They have duked it out already in the playful imaginations of the aficionados a thousand times, and everything that could be said or written about this samurai duel has already been spewed to the point of monotony. All that remains for the men themselves to do is enact one or the other of our projected scenarios proving one camp or the other as superior in prognostication. The fight itself has become, in the minds of many, a formality.
It’s easy to be wise now. Now we can say Hearns was brilliant at 147 pounds, effective at 154 pounds, but has not been impressive at 160 pounds.
Now we can remember that Hagler is the most consistent champion of the last decade, so far above every other middleweight in the world that he makes the whole division look shoddy by comparison. But somehow it isn’t that clear at 8:02 p.m. on April 15. It isn’t clear at all.
Before the first bell rings, Marvin Hagler does something he has never done before in all of his 64 professional bouts. He stands in his corner hammering his own chest and his own gleaming skull with his own gloved fists. The maniacal demon, Roberto Duran, punched himself before his fights, but Hagler? Never. It is a gesture that seems to say, if I hit myself, what can anyone else do to me?
When the bell rings, Hagler the cool tactician, the versatile mechanic, the scholar and yogi, abandons all his usual patience and caution. He attacks. Suddenly it’s not a game. It is not a sporting event. It is the real thing.
Sports reporters rarely cheer or holler. Rooting for one side means the opponent may not give you an interview. Boxing reporters can sometimes be heard cracking jokes or talking baseball while the punches fly and the sweat and blood spray onto their notebooks and shirts. It is evidently part of the mystique of objectivity to be blasé.
But the 200-plus people in the pressroom are not cool when Marvelous Marvin Hagler launches himself into Thomas Hearns’ body in the first seconds of the first round. The press gang roars. And goes on roaring.
The first round is a bubbling blister from hell. Hearns climbs into the ring with everything to win and nothing to lose. His junior middleweight championship is not on the line. His money is secure. All he can lose is a fight. Marvin Hagler risks everything. The money is there, but that light in the public eye, that name of Champ, that place in history can all disappear in a single punch. Hagler shows Hearns that there is something else to lose. Life itself. Hearns fights for it.
He lands that famous right hand and the legendary blow hurts Hagler but cannot stop him. Hearns is on the ropes, then Hagler’s forehead is bleeding over his right eye. The wire-service reporters, rattling blow-by-blow descriptions into their telephones, can’t keep up with the action. It is too fast and the shape of the fight changes too quickly with first one fighter and then the other hurt. “Ill get back to you,” snap the wire-service guys, and they drop their phones.
By the end of round two, Hearns is Jello-kneed on the ropes. He comes out for the third dancing. He tries to glide off at the end of his jab and bite at that cut on Hagler’s forehead. Referee Richard Steele stops the action so the doctor can examine the cut. Hagler is allowed to continue. “I was afraid, a little bit,” Hagler will say later, “but whenever I see that blood I turn into a bull. That’s when I know I’ve got to get serious and get it done quicker.”
Hearns is backing away as the final barrage catches him. A minute into the third round he topples to the deck like a felled pine.
Early in the hype for this event, Hagler was asked how he would deal with Hearns’ height advantage. “He’ll just take up more room on the canvas when he falls,” said Hagler. And Hearns seems to stretch over miles as he lies there with the referee chanting numbers above him. He beats the count, staggering like a newborn colt, his long legs drunk and bewildered.
Later they will ask Hearns why he stayed in close to fight with Hagler instead of keeping his jabbing distance.
“Marvin,” the Hit Man will answer, “left me no choice.”
Marvin Hagler jogs into the big shed for the post-fight press conference still robe-less, pulling his smiling wife along by the hand and waving at the hundreds of hard-nosed cynics who are giving him a standing ovation. He is probably the happiest adult human being on the planet at this moment. He has just punched his way out of mortal time and into history.
The bout has lasted eight minutes and 15,128 ticket holders have gotten more than their money’s worth. They float out of the arena into the Las Vegas night, walking tenderly, speaking gently, high as eagles.