Steve Marantz - Sorcery at Caesars: Sugar Rays Marvelous Fight

Sorcery

at

Caesars

Sugar Ray's Marvelous fight

Steve Marantz

Portland * Oregon

inkwaterpress.com

(c) Angie Carlino

Sugar Ray Leonard (left) and Marvelous Marvin Hagler, in 1981, at the Petronelli Gym in Brockton, Mass. Each saw in the other a big payday and a career-defining challenge.

To Alison

Knowing her fate, Atlantis sent out ships to all corners of the Earth.

On board were the Twelve:

The poet, the physician, the farmer, the scientist,

The magician and the other
so-called Gods of our legends.

Though Gods they were.

Donovan

_

Foreword

The fun began in 1973. Or thereabouts. I was a sports columnist for the Boston Globe and Marvin Hagler was a 19-year-old boxing prodigy from Brockton, Massachusetts, a place well within the Globe 's circulation area, so I was consigned to follow him for most of his long and circuitous rise to fame, fortune, and, of course, the middleweight title.

I first watched him work on local fight cards at high school gymnasiums and ball fields, dance halls and function rooms, and eventually traveled with him to London, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, a succession of grand athletic stops. Fourteen years. Marvin wound up in the spotlight. I wound up in four-star hotel rooms, expense account living at its finest. Not a bad deal for either of us.

"I'm calling from my round bed, looking at myself in the mirror on the ceiling," I reported from a suite at Caesars Palace to friends back home in the days preceding Marvin's ultimate fight on April 6, 1987, against Sugar Ray Leonard. "I think I will now step into the Jacuzzi, which is sunk into the middle of the living room floor."

The stories were very easy to write. (I used a contraption called "a typewriter," which I now describe as "sort of like a word processor, but without the need for either electricity or a printer.") Marvin was the common man doing quite uncommon things. He was without flash or guile, solid as a Sunday morning in a Baptist church. His trainers were Goody and Pat Petronelli, local Brockton guys who turned a lottery ticket into a meal ticket. He stuck with them for the entire ride, stuck with an assortment of Brockton characters that included doctors, lawyers and just plain friends.

Never did he allow himself to be packaged, put under that blister-wrap of sports promotion and hype. He began local and stayed local. There was a timeless quality about his operation, a return to the earlier boxing world of, say, the Fifties, when the Friday Night Fights were a black-and-white television staple and neighborhoods sent their worthiest contenders into the ring. He was black-and-white basic, a bald-headed, left-handed bundle of action with a very good punch and an even better chin.

He sparred with his brother. He ran his training miles in the morning in combat boots. Basic. Not a good interview, his quotes mainly were a collection of aphorisms like "Destruction and Destroy" and "I'm putting myself in jail" when he went into preparations for his next fight. He believed every one of them.

His training camp for the big fights usually was in Provincetown, Mass., on the far tip of Cape Cod. A ring was set up at the Provincetown Inn, which seemed to be an unlikely site since it catered to a gay male clientele.

"Why are you in this place?" I asked on one visit.

"I like to be out here with the sissies," Marvin replied. "Keeps my mind on my business."

Fighting anyone who was put in front of him, a collection of hard cases who mostly had been skipped as too dangerous by the carefully developed Sugar Ray and the well-connected Thomas (Hit Man) Hearns from the Kronk Gym in Detroit, Marvin forced his way into the rotation. He kept knocking down the people in front of him until he had to be taken seriously. He won so much that sound economics, not to mention the paying public, demanded Sugar Ray and Hearns had to fight him.

The entire ride was a wonder. The plots and sub-plots were constant, far removed from the familiar machinations of Boston team sports with their cyclical playoffs and draft days and salary disputes. Surprises abounded as rumors and press conferences, charges and counter-charges, ended with spectacular events, electricity running straight through the assembled bodies.

My favorite night of all was Sept. 27, 1980, when Marvin won the middleweight title at Wembley Arena in London. His opponent was Alan Minter, a well-intentioned Brit who had become a national symbol of English patriotism. He wore the design of the flag, the Union Jack, on his shorts, a reminder to his fans of his love for his country.

Many of those fans, I noticed in the lobby before the fight, seemed to be skinheads, a fearsome group covered in tattoos and black leathers, chains hanging from their tight pants. The skinheads were buying beer in bulk, full cases of the stuff, 24 bottles each, then lugging the cases into the upper reaches of the arena. I never had seen this before.

Dong. The fight began. Marvin destroyed Minter from the beginning. Dong. Cuts were opened quickly on the Englishman's face. Blood ran down to his patriotic shorts. Dong. The fight lasted only a minute and 45 seconds into the third round, stopped by the referee. Marvin finally was the champion.

The skinheads, with their 24 beers apiece, hadn't had time to consume much of the product. What to do? The bottles, full, started flying toward the ring. A riot began. The Petronelli brothers dropped Marvin to the canvas and covered him with their bodies. The people at ringside, myself included, looked for an escape. I was sitting next to Vito Antuofermo, former middleweight champion of the world, who was doing color commentary on Italian television.

"Follow me," Vito said.

I put that typewriter contraption over my head for protection. I followed. Somewhere on the trip out of the arena, fights breaking out everywhere, an unsuspecting Brit put a hand on Vito's shoulder. Just a hand. The former middleweight of the champion reacted with an immediate right uppercut to the jaw. The Brit went flying.

Hah.

* * *

I think of this - all of this and much more - after reading Sorcery at Caesars . In deft, terrific prose, Steve Marantz has laid out the itineraries for Marvin and Sugar Ray, leading up to one memorable night in the desert. The whole story is here, as exciting as it was the first time. All the details return.

Makes a man want to take a Jacuzzi in the middle of his living room.

-- Leigh Montville

_

Prologue

On the night of April 6, 1987, Sugar Ray Leonard stole a fight. A couple of million witnesses saw him get away with it.

Leonard's theft was so slick that the victim, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, didn't know until it was too late. His middleweight title was picked clean and gone, forever.

It happened at a parking lot behind Caesars Palace Hotel and Casino, in an outdoor boxing ring, under a Nevada moon.

Hagler was supposed to win. The betting public had made him a 3-1 favorite. In a poll of 67 media experts, 60 picked Hagler to win and 52 predicted he would knock out Leonard. Hagler had not lost in 101/2 years, while Leonard had fought just once in five years. A victory by Leonard was considered less likely than permanent damage to his body and mind.

After a round Leonard was unharmed and on his feet. After two rounds, then four, then eight, Leonard reminded his doubters that boxing is more than a test of strength - it is an art, a Sweet Science. Through 12 rounds, Leonard and Hagler boxed with skill, purpose, and occasional fury. Neither scored a decisive blow, and at the final bell, Hagler raised his hands in triumph while Leonard dropped to his knees in exhaustion. Moments later only Leonard's hands were upraised.