Although Hearns won fair and square, Hill entered the fight with a VERY recently broken nose. In fact, I believe it was broken 2 weeks before the fight. I can think of one fighter who would never take the risk that Hill did...Keith “Once Upon A Time” Thurman.
Losing to Hearns was a low point for Hill ,can u imagine the respect he'd have got if he'd totally demolished Tommy ?
The problems with Hearns for Hill is that everything worked off the jab for Hill, and Hearns outjabbed him. Once he took Hill's jab away, Tommy had to avoid the counter left hook of Hill and not step inside. So he basically tried to stay on the outside and land punches and at times had some good momentum of combinations. He had everything Hill had, plus a right hand. Never the counter left Hill had, but the right hand made up for that. Although Hearns had a better left to the body than most people .Obviously had Hill been able to go back in time, he would try and take more chances and make Tommy use his legs more and get Tommy tired, but that was not Hill's game.
Virgil was a bit overly confident like many guys who fought the older Hearns or Duran or Leonard. They want the name and think they are easy fights, but with their experience, sometimes it is harder than they think. He landed nice jabs on Tommy but couldn't sucker Tommy in for his counter left hook and he didn't push Tommy back like Barkley did so well.