If Hagler got the decision against Sugar Ray?

In a sense I believe his legacy is better because he lost a close decision and never cameback. He walked away and kept his dignity. No images in our mind of Marvin Hagler slumped to the canvas being KOd by some fighter who couldn`t have been competitive with him a few years earlier.

 

Agree with ETM. I don't want to remember Hagler as a guy drooling blood, slumped in a corner after a beating from some club fighter, just because he was 56 and didn't know when to hang them up. I like to remember Hagler as the guy that destroyed a division.

 

A win would have still had him comfortably behind Duran for me. SRL was a 4-1 underdog. It's only hindsight and knowing SRL won that changes this. At any rate i had SRL the winner for sure. I have him above Hagler ATG as well as Duran. I'd have Duran comfortably in the top 10, SRL between 10-20, Hagler 20-30 and Hearns a group or two behind that.

 

Exactly.
His career is near-perfect. The fact is he was never KO'd and never suffered a bad beating in his entire career, dominated his division as undisputed champion for 6 years, didn't pick and choose his opposition.
The irony is he lost his title to the challenger who was the least deserving of a title shot.

 

That's one take on it but not one built on the whole picture.

By 1986, Hagler was done. He knew he was done and had been talking about retirement, immediately after the Mugabi bout.
The only reasons this fight ever came off was, a) Leonard knew this and, b) the money on offer (the only relatively small concession given to Hagler by Leonard, in the contract negotiations).


This was a Leonard showcase and, if Leonard hadn't seen the decline in Hagler, it would never have been conceived.


Leonard's 'one-fight-in-five-years' isn't glossed over, either. The only thing people went on about before the fight was whether or not the ring-rust would be too much for Leonard to shake off. It was just as much celebrated in victory, after the fight.

Nobody was talking about how labored Hagler had looked against Mugabi or the fact Hagler himself had been relatively inactive over the previous few years.

And, I'm not sure where the idea that Hagler's "aura" had been "carefully built" comes from. There was nothing meticulously crafted about Hagler's career.

That "aura" had been well earned through hard graft but, in reality, it had faded before the Leonard bout. It was, however, a very handy image to maintain and promote, so as to help sell the fight.

I agree to some extent that, had Hagler been given the nod, he would still have taken criticism for what would no doubt be considered as struggling against the inactive Leonard. However, it would likewise have been undeserved, given where Hagler was, at that point in his career.

 

From the reliable accounts i've read he copped quite a beating against Monroe.

 

Yeah, you're right, he possibly did.

 

Monroe allegedly burst a blood vessel in Hagler's nose, early in their first fight and closed both of his eyes, over the course. On that basis, Hagler was pretty beat up.

That's said, Hagler never gave up; kept coming and even won two or three rounds.

 

You bring up some good points, but frankly a lot of what you say here merely highlights my argument.

For example, you start off by saying how far gone Hagler was, which is the revisionist view of it. Of course this was no prime Hagler, and he definitely WAS in decline, but he was still considered a dominant champion. I'm sorry if you don't remember it that way, but it's true. Very few gave Leonard a hope of seeing the final bell. Your remarks here are the typical thing we see in recent years, that it was almost an understood thing that the field had evened up somewhat because even though Leonard had fought but once in five years, Hagler was old so it doesn't really count. That's just not the way it was viewed then.

As to my comment about his "aura being crafted" or whatever, I fail to see what's so objectionable about saying that. He DID craft it through years of solitude and work, and put himself across as a hard-azz who took no prisoners. He gloried in that image, and did everything he could to cultivate it, just as Leonard honed his own aura in his own way. Nothing wrong with that.

To further clarify, my comments regarding Leonard's inactivity being "glossed over" refers more to how the result is viewed today in forums such as these. People post all the time (as you have here) by explaining away Leonard's victory as more a product of his opportunism and business savvy than anything that happened in the ring and rarely if ever mention that the bigger handicap is coming off that kind of layoff and putting in that sort of sharp effort, not Hagler battling his own advancing years.

To tell it THAT way is the one that's not based on the whole picture.

 

Isn't it a pity we don't have that fight on film. Monroe was said to be basically perfect that night.

 

He did for sure. Could obviously take it.

 

as the only person on this forum who has seen Marvin in sparring the month before, you knew a los somewhere was going to come. It just came sooner than people expected (much to every SRL fan's deelite)

 

yeah, Hagler has never been stopped unlike both Duran N leonard. Of course, Duran took far more chances than Leonard. Leonard was knocked out after only 30+ fights when Camacho did a little Richard on him (a bop-bam-bop-loo-bop-a bop-bam-boom!) and punched holes in that big head of his

Leonard fans must have nightmares at night. Leonard ranks well below both Hagler N Duran and I dont have to tell you what Floyd would have done to him. can anyone say Terry Norris?

 

You know - the term 'revisionist' is overused and misused like many turns of phrase, often employed by people in order to dismiss the points of view of other people; perhaps relegate them to a triviality or just plain ignore them altogether. In this case, it is not revisionist to suggest that Hagler looked labored against Mugabi or that he was seriously thinking about retirement after that fight.

Moreover, as someone who had tipped Leonard to beat Hagler, at the time, I am quite certain that I'm not being revisionist, since it wasn't a particularly difficult call to make, if one rose above the media-marketing version of what was about to happen. It was just a case, perhaps, of considering the Hagler/Mugabi fight; Hagler's performance; his intention to retire (suggested during the post-Mugabi-fight interview and drawn out over months of speculation in the press); Leonard's timing in bringing his challenge and the showcase it became for him.


I'm not sure how my point about Hagler being done (or, using your words, being "in decline") really highlights your argument, other than bring attention to the fact that you failed to make any mention of it yourself, in the post that I initially responded to. How far Hagler had actually fallen from his peak, by the time of the Leonard bout is up for debate but it was there to see and personally, I think it is a factor that needs to be taken into consideration, if one is going to imply that the result of the fight, win or lose, would have had its detrimental impact on Hagler's legacy, either way.

The evidence of Hagler's slump and lack of desire to continue fighting aren't changed by him being considered a dominant champion (he actually was the dominant champion, as well as deemed the then Pound-for-Pound #1). Neither is it changed by how much the media played on Leonard's inactivity; more or less the only point you focus on. Much like the media used it as the backbone of the fight's story, it's a plot-line, which would not have been very well supported by the truth of Hagler's downturn, and why I raised it as an omission on your part.

You think Leonard alone took Hagler's reputation as a bada$$ away from him? I think an obvious decline (vs. Mugabi) in itself probably cracks the "thing" you refer to as Hagler's 'carefully built aura'. So, it isn't really a point of whether or not the field was evened up between Hagler and Leonard, but more one of Hagler's invincibility being overplayed for the sake of the promotion. Once the fight was announced, all the stew over Hagler wanting to retire was forgotten and it all became about Leonard and his mighty challenge.

I often point to Hugh McIlvanney's piece in Sports Illustrated: THE ILLUSION OF VICTORY, which provides a view, based on that very thing called perception. You might want to look it up.

On the matter you raise about Hagler's image:- Again, there's nothing "carefully built" about Hagler or his career - hard work and training, come with the territory of most successful Boxers. You seem to imply he was deliberately molding the media's perception of him, when it was him just doing what he did best and the results from his contests that were building his reputation. Ironically, he really only garnered that notoriety of being the ultimate bada$$, when he emphatically beat Hearns - this his 65th bout. (No doubt this brought added appeal for Leonard and stoked his motivation to return to the ring.) And, it was used to great effect in building the Hagler/Leonard bout into a massive event.


So, I made clear, in my previous post, how I "remember" the Hagler/Leonard bout being perceived and punted by the media in its build-up and, of course, the popular belief was that Leonard had no chance, due to inactivity. I just didn't get caught up with it back then and I'm not giving it too much weight now. And, I don't think by simply adding a point or two from Hagler's side of the story, which you omitted, is to not see the whole picture.