Morning Briefing : New Logic: A Boxer Who Wants Victory the Most Will Lose Fight

“Whoever wants it the most.” That’s usually the answer you get when you ask the question, “Who do you think will win?”

Not when you ask Sugar Ray Leonard. It’s for precisely the opposite reason that he is picking Marvin Hagler to beat Tommy Hearns April 15 at Las Vegas.

“The outcome of the fight will be determined by who wants it too much,” Leonard told Larry King of the Sporting News. “By that, I mean one fighter will be quicker to leave his game plan because he desperately wants to beat the other guy. The one who does that will make more mistakes and will lose, and I think it will be Hearns. Tommy wants to knock Marvin out so bad it will harm him.”

Recalling the only loss of his career, to Roberto Duran in their first fight, Leonard said: “That’s the only time I left my game plan. I let my emotions get the best of me. I tried to prove my manhood, so I fought his fight.

“He taunted me. He cursed my mother, my children, my wife. He said unbelievable things, and I let them get to me. Now, we are good friends and I have learned that that was his game plan, so to speak. He got to me. That was very stupid of me, but emotions are a part of life. Up to that time, I always thought I could separate them from my work.”

Medina Dixon of Old Dominion, leading scorer in the win over Georgia for the NCAA women’s title, was a classmate of Pat Ewing at Ringe-Latin High School in Cambridge, Mass.

Says Dixon: “Patrick used to teach me his Jamaican slang. Stuff that can’t be repeated here.”

Larry Brown has put in two years at the University of Kansas, so isn’t it pull-up-stakes time?

He says no--sort of. Denying a report he would become the new coach of the Clippers, he said: “I told Danny Manning that I would stay here until he graduates. Of course, my players realize anything can happen.”

Of course.

The lament of New York Yankees vice-president Woody Woodward, a former big league infielder: “When I played, we worked 12 months of the year because we had to get jobs in the offseason, and the front office worked seven months. Now, players work several months and the front office works 12 months. My timing was less than desirable.”

They call him the Louie DiPalma of coaches, in honor of the rumpled character played by Danny DeVito in “Taxi,” but Rollie Massimino doesn’t want anyone knocking his wardrobe.

“I am the best dressed coach in the country,” the Villanova coach told John Feinstein of the Washington Post last week. “The best. You bring in any five guys and I guarantee you it’ll be like Mickey Mouse against Mickey Mantle. I’ve bought 20 pairs of shoes in the last month. Look at this shirt. I bought this in Hong Kong for $104. I throw away more clothes than most in the coaches buy.”

He added wistfully: “I can’t help it if I wrinkle easily.”

Said D.A. Weibring after finishing second to Calvin Peete in the Tournament Players Championship: “I tried to apply the full-court press on the back nine, and he went to the four-corners.”

Jari Kurri’s girlfriend in Edmonton is likewise a native of Finland and works for a Helsinki paper, sending back stories on the NHL.

When an Oiler teammate asked if he got great press in Finland, Kurri said: “I don’t know. She’s always writing about Wayne Gretzky.”

Quotebook

Boston Manager John McNamara, on his two-year contract with the Red Sox: “It’s the first time I’ve had more than a one-year deal since the Army.”