MARVELLOUS Marvin Hagler’s untimely death has focused the mind of boxing on one of the toughest, determined and noble men to ever occupy the ring. 

A product of New Jersey’s black working class, he worked for everything he achieved in a sport that all too often let him down with bad decisions, lack of opportunities to progress his career when he deserved them and poor purses relative to his peers. 

Rather than allow the myriad of injustices he experienced deter him from his goal of being a world champion, though, Hagler absorbed them with the same inner strength with which he absorbed opponents’ punches.

He used the ensuing bitterness to propel him harder in the gym and on the tough roads of his adopted home, Brockton, Massachusetts, where his mother took the family after their New Jersey tenement was burned out in the 1967 New Jersey race riot.

He first entered a boxing gym after losing a street fight to a local boxer and there met the Petronelli brothers, Goody and Pat, who would guide him through his entire career, amateur and pro. In boxing terms it was a match made in heaven, though Hagler’s journey to the summit of boxing would involve a journey through hell.

Turning pro in 1973 after losing just one of 56 amateur bouts, he remained undefeated for the first three years, recording 19 KOs in 25 wins with one draw. Keen for bigger fish, the Petronellis took him to Philadelphia, then the unofficial US boxing capital. Here Hagler fought five times and lost twice, though the two losses he sustained, against Bobby “Boogaloo” Watts and Willie “The Worm” Munroe, came into the category of hometown decisions.

In customary fashion, Hagler went on to avenge both losses with early knockouts in subsequent rematches.

Emitting an aura of menace in and out the ring, his style, which he adopted early in his career, was an act of boxing genius on the part of the Petronellis. Though right-handed, he adopted a southpaw stance so that he could lead with his clubbing right hand, bringing it closer to his opponents and deploying it as a power jab.

It was not until 1979 and 50 fights that Marvellous Marvin Hagler at last stepped into the ring to challenge for a world title. However politics denied him again, when the Vegas judges sitting ringside unconscionably scored his imperious performance over 15 rounds against Vito Antuofermo a draw.

It was the following year at London’s Wembley Arena that he finally received his due. England’s Alan Minter had wrested the title from Antoufermo and Hagler now proceeded to rip from him with a vicious one-sided display of raw aggression and bad intentions over three rounds. Thereafter the arena descended into chaos as an avalanche of beer cans, coins and other missiles rained down on the ring. Hagler had entered the ring to boos and racial slurs, and was now forced to leave it with his belt like a thief in the night.

Fast forward to 1985 and one of the most exciting, brutal and violent fights in the history of the game unfolded when Hagler faced his then nemesis Tommy “The Hitman” Hearns at Caesars Palace in Vegas. The fight was officially in defence of a middleweight title Hagler had been defending successfully for five years by this point. In truth it was clash to see who could take possession of the other’s heart.

Hearns had more than enough reason to feel confident. He’d knocked out 34 of his previous 41 opponents and, at 30, Hagler was a fighter many believed was past his prime. Hearns also carried considerable height and reach advantage — though this was offset by the fact that Hagler was a natural middleweight while Hearns was moving up from junior middleweight.

Emanuel Steward laid out his fighter’s gameplan in anticipation of Hagler fighting on the front foot with his customary aggression, telling reporters: “I think Marvin may come out so fired up that we’ll just have Tommy stick and move. Hagler will be so juiced up [that] after seven or eight rounds it’ll rob his strength. Then we’ll go for the late knockout.”

As sportswriter Pat Putnam described it, Hagler came to the ring with “a simple strategy, one that could have been designed by Attila: keep the swords swinging until there are no more heads to roll, give no quarter, take no prisoners. There would be only one pace, all-out: only one direction, forward.”

This is precisely what transpired. From the opening bell both men didn’t so meet as crash into one another in the centre of the ring, standing toe-to-toe throwing bombs like two men fighting over a phone in a phone box. No amount of training or sparring can prepare any fighter for this kind of intensity. The outcome would come down to not only who could inflict the most but also who could endure the most.

The end came in the third round. Referee Richard Steele stopped the action to allow the doctor at ringside to inspect the cut Hagler had sustained on his forehead in the previous round. This after a Hearns jab opened it up again to unleash a torrent of blood down Hagler’s face. “Can you see all right?” the doctor asked, to which Hagler replied: “No problem. I ain’t missing him, am I?”

With that, the doctor signalled that the fight could continue.

This was all the impetus Hagler needed to go ahead and bring matters to a close, immediately barrelling into Hearns with a fierce left and right to the side of the head to send him spinning back on legs so skinny they defied the laws of physiology. 

Hagler never let up and proceeded to chase him across the ring, throwing punches as he went, before leaping forward with an overhand right which found the target and had Hearns out on his feet before hitting the canvas.

Rightly so, these three rounds are considered the greatest to have ever taken place in a ring and the victory was the high point of Hagler’s long career. However, if victory over Tommy Hearns in 1985 was the high point, defeat against Sugar Ray Leonard was undoubtedly the low point. 

This was another grudge match, but this time Hagler faced an opponent who came with the perfect gameplan, which was to bamboozle him with stunning footwork and movement, combined with rapid eye-catching and point-scoring combinations near the beginning and end of each round.

Hagler, determined to land, fought with his heart more than his head against Leonard, following him around the ring as if on a leash, rather than cutting off the ring to close him down. No matter, the split decision in Sugar Ray’s favour after 15 rounds remains controversial to this day. 

Hagler was convinced at the time and always maintained afterwards that he did enough to win, accusing Leonard of running the entire night. The sense of having been robbed drove him into retirement and he never fought again.

“When a man goes into the ring, he’s going to war,” Marvellous Marvin Hagler once declared, confirming that for a man whose entire life had been a fight of one kind or another, bullshit was a foreign land. 

Dead at 66, he leaves behind a legacy that will never die.