Hearns Must Have Taken Fight Plan From the Titanic

It was like watching Bambi being mugged, Little Red Ridinghood devoured by the wolf, a cat drowning.

You had to cover your eyes. The Hit Man got hit, all right. Like a lot of guys in this bust-out town, he took a hit when he should have played what he had. Stood pat. Instead, he went for the bundle. He crapped out, rolled a 2. Hagler faded him.

Thomas Hearns is a nice young man, good to his mother, generous to his church. He is soft-spoken, considerate, kind to animals, doesn’t swear or spit in public. He’s the kind of guy you wouldn’t mind sitting next to on a cruise. He uses the right fork, eats with his hat off.

He’s just got this one, teeny, tiny flaw. He tends to get lightheaded when struck in the jaw with a gloved fist. His knees weaken when he gets slammed into a rope.

These are not serious flaws. Most people have them. The trouble is, most people are conscious of this peril and avoid situations where they will come up. It’s like, if you have acrophobia, fear of heights, you don’t climb tall buildings. If you bleed, you don’t shave with sharp razors.

Thomas Hearns doesn’t seem to understand the situation. He keeps having these encounters with people who are very good at striking people with their gloved fists.

Then, instead of making it complicated for them to strike him, he does everything he can to smooth their path to his chin.

It’s like watching a baby walk into traffic, a canary leaving its cage when the cat’s around.

You want to say, “No, no, Thomas, not there! Thomas, you come back this very instant! Thomas, you listen to me, do you hear?!”

Thomas pays no attention. Thomas is like the kid climbing up a steep roof after a balloon, oblivious to the fall.

Maybe, Thomas needs glasses. The first look you get at Marvelous Marvin Hagler, you shudder.

First of all, there’s that bald pate. It glows in the dark. It is as menacing as a hood. It calls to mind every villain in every James Bond movie ever. It suggests you use alternate routes if you see it coming.

Then, there are the eyes. They’re wary, pitiless, agate-hard. The animal on the prowl. The predator with its prey in the pupil. If you haven’t got a Land Rover, run. This looks like something that should have a horn in the middle of its nose. It would charge tanks.

You don’t trade bites with it.

Thomas Hearns looks by comparison like--what? A tango dancer? A piano player?

Thomas thinks his name should be “Rocky.” Thomas makes his fight with his chin like some plodding guy with only a puncher’s chance. He has these swift, skinny legs, these long, limber arms, but he discards them and goes to strategy like two guys locked in a cellar.

It was a great, great fight, Hagler-Hearns. It was Dempsey-Firpo, all right. It was almost Germany-Russia.

But it was because Thomas Hearns made it so. It wasn’t a contest, it was a collision. If this was a fight, so was a train wreck.

In golf over the weekend, you saw the spectacle of a guy throwing away a tournament, the Masters, because he went foolishly for a green he could have finessed.

The golfer was wildly conservative compared to Thomas Hearns. Thomas’ recklessness was total. He’s the kind of guy who would dive down smokestacks of enemy battleships.

Consider the pattern of the fight. Thomas Hearns, swifter of foot, speedier of hand, had an opponent who was bleeding from his forehead like a guy who just broke a glass on it or got an arrow from one of Custer’s Indians. Even rudimentary strategy would dictate a long-range destruction of that inviting target. Your chances of ending the fight vertically are enormously enhanced by such tactics.

Thomas would have none of it. He fought as if he were the man cut. He fought like a guy standing on a precipice or a hotel ledge with a madman.

Rocky Marciano used to make his fights this way. So did Rocky Balboa. Thomas must have seen too many of these movies.

You can do all the roadwork you want, stage all the aerobics exhibitions that please you, issue all the bold pre-fight bulletins you can draft. But if you become a face-fighter when the bell rings, all the rest was a waste of time. All Thomas really needed to do for his fight plan was soak his chin in brine.

It was the most vicious three rounds of fighting the division has ever seen. But then, so is watching a fox in a chicken coop. Hurling yourself on Marvelous Marvin Hagler is heroic. You don’t have to do it. Marvin will come find you. And when he does, chances are you’ll find yourself wrapped in the arms of a referee who is asking you what day it is, and you can’t remember. It was magnificent. But so was the Titanic hitting the iceberg.

Marvelous Marvin Hagler might have knocked him out anyway--if he wasn’t up to his ankles in blood. But you don’t have to help him. He’ll get you on his own. Someone should have told Thomas that. The way it turned out, we’ll all have nightmares for weeks. The least Marvin should do is send him thank-you notes. Along with the get-well cards.