Why didn’t Marvin Hagler fight Wilfred Benitez in 1982?

Duran didn’t move up to middleweight until Hagler gave him a shot. He won a junior middleweight title. Benitez won a junior middleweight title and defended it successfully … against the same Duran lol. (Who ‘did it right’ by beating a former welterweight champ Pipino who was coming off a loss and a year-long layoff, and that fight was at junior middle, a weight Pipino never did anything to distinguish himself at.)

As for Wilfred, he called out Hagler after beating Duran, before he had lost to Hearns (a fight that happened, btw, because Hagler pulled out of a fight with Hearns over an injury and didn’t get around to fighting him until almost 2 1/2 years later).

I agree that Hagler did decide to wait Benitez out rather than fight him. That’s self-evident.

But if you have a problem with Hagler fighting people who hadn’t established themselves at middleweight, you can start with Duran, Leonard and Hearns. But don’t use that as an excuse if you’re not going to call him out for making those fights.

He could have skipped Don Lee and fought a bigger, more important fight against a more deserving opponent in Benitez. He could have had Arum pay Fully Obel step-aside money to make the more lucrative fight with Benitez — Arum did it multiple times with Roldan.

Nah, Hagler wasn’t making some grand stand about Benitez not being proven at middleweight or he wouldn’t have fought Leonard, Duran or Hearns. He just didn’t want the fight.

 

I’m saying somebody was. Maybe it was Arum. Maybe it was the Petronellis. Maybe it was Marvin.

But the fight was there to be made and it definitely was worth more than fights with the likes of Caveman Lee and Fully Obel, neither of whom was a household name outside his own household.

Marvin’s biggest fight to that point in his career was being on national TV in primetime on the undercard of (wait for it) Ray Leonard vs. Wilfred Benitez, where he fought Vito the Mosquito to a draw and failed to live up to his hype in a mostly tentative performance where he failed to win the middleweight title.

In fact, Marvin had fought on a Leonard undercard before Ray was champ. And the only time he was on the same card as Benitez, he was on Wilfred’s undercard against Ray. Benitez had been on network TV more than Marvin had, and had additionally a win over Carlos Palomino, who was a network TV darling.

Benitez-Leonard, Benitez-Duran and, a bit later, Benitez-Hearns were all bigger fights on bigger stages than any Marvin had ever fought on. HBO was still just breaking into the boxing biz around the time Marvin became champ and (wisely) hitched its wagon to Hagler as its blue-collar star because he was a champion that they could afford because the networks weren’t breaking down Arum’s door to televise Hagler.

There’s no question whatsoever that a fight with Benitez coming off a win over Duran would have been bigger than any Marvin had been involved in to that point and could have generated a bigger purse. The Benitez-Duran fight had been on HBO but also on closed circuit in a lot of locations (because HBO didn’t have reach yet into a lot of cable markets … the idea of a premium pay channel wasn’t firmly established yet to the point that some systems just wouldn’t carry it) — and Hagler wouldn’t get into a CC fight until he met Duran.

I’m not saying ‘scared’ but maybe they thought the risk was too high because Wilfred was a defensive master and might be able to befuddle Hagler. I personally think Marvin would have won, as most do, but it would have been a bigger risk that Caveman or a second fight with Fully Obel. (And at the time Wilfred had tamed Duran, looked splendid in winning the junior middleweight title against Maurice Hope and hadn’t shown the signs of fast decline that would arrive. We can’t look at what happened after as impacting what the fight looked like at that time because Arum, Marvin and the Petronellis didn’t have a crystal ball.)

 

Ask yourself what would happen if a fighter who got humiliated by Kirkland Laing fought Marvin Hagler — I’ll tell you what happened: Roberto Duran gave him his toughest title defense to that point in Hagler’s reign. That happened to Duran BEFORE he fought Hagler.

So you’re asking me to ask myself what happens if Benitez fights Hagler and I’ll tell you we don’t know, and that what happened later in Wilfred’s career when he was shot has no bearing on what might have happened before then. That’s not a hard question to grasp — that’s not the version that would have fought Hagler.

Aren’t you the one going in circles? Didn’t you just tell me that Benitez should have moved up to middleweight before getting a shot, and how you’re telling me had Wilfred beaten Hearns (who wasn’t a middleweight yet) he would have gotten a shot? Then you said Duran did it the right way … by beating a welterweight (Cuevas) at junior middle and then beating a junior middle.

Let me try again:

I’m not talking about after Wilfred fought Hearns. I’m talking about after he beat Duran, which came before that fight.

At that point he’s a very viable challenge for Hagler. He called Hagler out. He’s a better challenger than Mickey Goodwin (explain what he did to earn a shot). He’s a better challenger than Caveman Lee — how about instead of fighting Lee, when Goodwin fell out Hagler could have worked out a deal to fight Wilfred instead? What did Lee do to earn a title shot, beat journeyman John LoCicero? That counts more than beating Duran? (If that’s the case, then Duran never should have gotten a shot at Hagler.)

And if the Hearns-Benitez winner was supposed to get a fight with Hagler, why didn’t it happen until nearly 2 1/2 years later?

As for Fully Obel being a mandatory, so was Roldan … yet Arum happily handed him step-aside money AND paid him to fight on a couple of Hagler undercards so Marvin could fight other challengers. He could have done the same with Obel, or at least tried.

There is a period of time where Wilfred is way more viable and way more attractive an opponent than who Marvin was defending against. You cannot with a straight face argue that Mickey Goodwin, Caveman Lee nor Fully Obel (who MMH had already KO’d) are better opponents than Benitez. Yet Marvin didn’t fight him.

What happened after that is immaterial — you might as well use Muhammad Ali vs. Larry Holmes to argue that Ali wasn’t good enough to beat Foreman.

 

Well Hagler could have offered him a title shot and we’d have seen if Wilfred would have taken him up on it.

Wilfred stylistically could give a lot of guys problems. He completely neutralized Duran.

Make a case for me that Mickey Goodwin, Caveman Lee and Fully Obel were better opponents, more financially attractive or were higher profile fights than Benitez coming off a win over Duran would have been. It’s not possible with a straight face.

Why Marvin didn’t fight him is up to conjecture, but it’s very possible that whether Hagler himself saw Benitez as potentially troublesome or not that Arum or the Petronellis might have.

I mean, who would have thought Vito Antuofermo could have given the ‘uncrowned champion’ a close enough fight for it to be a draw? Who would have anticipated a Duran who had already lost to Robbie Sims and been humiliated by Kirkland Laing (an opponent hand-picked because he was supposed to be a walkover) would give Marvin such a troublesome fight, or that a Leonard who had taken off years and not even had a tuneup could upset MMH? Who saw Buster Douglas and said ‘well if Tyson doesn’t bring his A game, Buster will dominate him and knock him out’?

All of what you’re saying is conjecture — yes, Marvin would be favored. But he fought plenty of other guys he was favored against, so why not Benitez?