This Fight Could Really Get Ugly

It’s supposed to be the last of the great ones. A throwback. Something out of the primordial ooze, the dawn of history. A reminder of the bare-knuckle era. Dempsey-Firpo revisited. Any Ketchel fight. Zale-Graziano. Jake LaMotta vs. the world.

They don’t make fights like this any more. Even high society will come to this one dripping in mink. This isn’t some guy in pink trunks vs. the latest guy they found on a truck. These are the certified elite of pugs. The best fighters in the world today. Out of the Golden Age of Boxing.

Shades of Benny Leonard, the Toy Bulldog, Fritzie Zivic, the real Sugar Ray, the real McCoy.

So, it’s The Big One. Nature’s best. The prime of the species.

See them now, tawny, hard-bellied guys, eyes glittering. Machines. Whatever bone and gristle can do, they do. Two lions circling each other in a clearing. Crouched panthers. Dangerous when wounded. Ferocious when not. If you see them in the bush, shoot first.

This won’t be some gavotte, some agony fight. This is “Star Wars,” not Sharkey-Stribling or Tunney staying out of trouble. These are warriors.

Come early. Stay ready. This may be one of those “He’s up! He’s down!” fights. They may bite. They don’t like each other, not that that matters. Dempsey liked Tunney. Marciano never had anything against the guys he half-killed.

One of these guys hasn’t lost a fight in nine years. The other one only lost one fight, ever.

Still, it’s a strange matchup.

In this corner, Thomas Hearns, the challenger. Look at him now. He’s too tall to be a welterweight, too thin to be a middleweight.

Hearns is a fighter in search of himself, a character looking for a part. He doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up. He’s looking for his fistic identity.

Does he want to be a slugger? Or a boxer? A tap dancer? Or the guy with the gun in this movie? Gregory Hines? Or Mr. T? Will this be a musical? Or a shoot-em-up?

Hearns has vacillated. He was the Hit Man. He didn’t care for that. He preferred the Motor City Cobra. The sobriquets signified his pugilistic schizophrenia. It could be fatal. Do you want to be Dempsey or Tunney? Do you fight out of a crouch? Or off a bicycle? Do you attack? Or run?

It’s like Brando trying to get the hang of a role. How do you play Hamlet?

Only, you can’t experiment when the bell rings. In the ring with Marvin Hagler is no place for indecision.

Hagler knows who he is, all right. The Enforcer. The Banger. His fight plan is, “Where is he?!” His strategy is, “Kill ‘im!”

Hagler’s no Cobra. He’s a guy who collects bad debts on the docks. He’s the head knocker, the bad guy. No dancer. He doesn’t want to be Gregory Hines. He wants to be Little Caesar. The menace. The one with the gun.

If he had a part in a movie, he’d be the guy guarding the gang hideout. “You want I should pinch his head off, boss?” He’d scare Mr. T. Hagler didn’t come to run. Hagler came to rumble.

As the Hit Man, Hearns used to attack opponents like the USS Missouri. All guns firing. It took Sugar Ray Leonard to turn him into the snake. Hearns didn’t so much lose confidence in his punch as he lost confidence in his chin. He took it out of the game plan.

Hagler lets his chin take care of itself. He ignores it. He fought only one tactical fight in his life. Against Roberto Duran. It was a mistake. He didn’t lose, but Duran was alive and well--and upright--when it was over. Hagler likes his opponents horizontal at the finish. Breathing, if possible, but you can’t have everything.

The Duran fight was the last time Hagler treated boxing as a science. He makes his fight now like the Green Bay Packers on the one-yard line. Just line up and hit somebody. The referee if he gets in the way.

Hagler is not a frill guy. His hair got to be a bother so he shaved it off. He cut out all the nifty moves in the ring the same way. His strategy, if it can be called that, could be called early landslide. He tries to bury his opponent. Maybe, literally.

The Hit Man-Cobra has lots of hair. And lots of moves. He needs them. There’s not much to him outside of altitude. When he turns sideways, he tends to disappear. If he ate a chicken, he’d bulge.

Hagler thinks Hearns has been ducking him. That may not have been a bad idea. Better to duck now than to have to later. At 6-1, it’s a complicated stoop. Still, you can’t leave $9 million, which each fighter figures to gross, lying around. That’ll pay for a lot of smelling salts.

Hagler makes Hearns look more like a concert pianist than a pug. He plans to play a fugue on him.

Hearns, for his part, had probably best plan to return to his old ring style--invisibility. If he can make Hagler aim punches at places he has just left, he only has to stay at long range for 12 rounds, the “championship” distance the World Boxing Council insists on in the interest of brain safety. It’s a nice idea, except that fighters have been killed in a lot fewer than 12 rounds.

See them now as they face one another in their last press conference. Hagler shows up in a blood-red cap with “War” emblazoned on the visor--summing up his one-dimensional approach to the sport.

Thomas prefers an oral assault. He refers to champion Hagler as a midget. Hagler, 5-9 1/2, is furious. When asked if Hearns’ 6-1 height will present a problem, he counters, “Why? There’s plenty of room for him on the canvas.”

Hearns’ shtick will be to see that there’s plenty of room in the ring, not the floor. He may be better off trying to fight Marvelous Marvin from across the horizon. Or over the rainbow. He’s got the reach. But that’s only important at a boardinghouse dinner.

“We’re not playing basketball. We’re not trading jump shots,” sniffs Hagler.

It may be a fight for the ages. Or it may be as one-sided as a shark bite. Hagler’s problem will be getting Hearns to hold still. Hearns’ problem will be getting Hagler to wonder if he showed up.

If nobody makes a mistake it can be as dull as paper-hanging. If somebody makes a mistake, and somebody usually does in this game, it can be as terrible as seeing an iceberg off the port bow. It can make Dempsey-Firpo look like a debate.