In the Other Corner . . . : Mugabi and Shuler, the Main Distractions, Would Like to Make History of Their Own

These two men, James Shuler and John Mugabi, are regarded here as inconveniences, necessary but bothersome. They are irritants. They stand in the way of this summer’s rematch between Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns. They stand in the way, most boxing fans believe, of history.

And so these two undefeated but largely anonymous fighters try our patience. What will it take to get them out of the way so boxing’s real work can be done and so the best middleweight in the world, or even in history, can be conclusively crowned?

That these two men, Shuler and Mugabi, are suffered at all is by reason of promotional requirements. They constitute nothing more than a big tease. After Hagler harpooned Hearns last spring here at Caesars Palace, it was necessary to provide a decent interval before a rematch could be staged, so the event could once more acquire some mystery.

Moreover, the destruction was so complete--Hagler knocked Hearns out in three of ring history’s most concussive rounds--that it was necessary for Hearns to prove he hadn’t been bombed out of boxing altogether.

So it was that John (The Beast) Mugabi was recruited to challenge Hagler’s undisputed title. Hagler could then improve his image as the fierce but workmanlike destroyer of young talent and prove as well that age does not dog him.

And so it was that James (Black Gold) Shuler, whose real gold was left on the table when the United States boycotted the 1980 Olympics, was set up in opposition of Hearns, one-time Hit Man. Hearns, still the World Boxing Council junior-middleweight champion, is technically the challenger on Monday night’s card as he is moving up to middleweight to take Shuler’s North American Boxing Federation title.

It is Shuler’s job to certify Hearns’ determination, that Hearns’ heart wasn’t left with his consciousness in the middle of the ring in his last fight nearly a year ago.

And if you doubt Shuler’s role as a promotional tool in this extravaganza, consider that there is actually a price on his head. You see, the quicker Hearns disposes of Shuler, thereby proving he is still the Hit Man, the more attractive the eventual Hearns-Hagler rematch is. So if Hearns knocks Shuler out within six rounds, he will command $3.5 million. If he knocks him out thereafter, he will fight Hagler for $3.25 million. If he wins but fails to score a knockout, his purse will be just $3 million.

Mugabi and Shuler, mere accessories to a greater promotion, one that might challenge the $26-million pot Bob Arum raked in last April when he staged the third-richest fight of all time. Mugabi and Shuler, sacrificed on a canvas altar.

Of course, they could win.

John (The Beast) Mugabi has recently gone to some lengths to put distance between himself and the animal kingdom. While training in Arizona he decided to convert to Catholicism and so became John (Paul) Mugabi, dropping (The Beast). In fact, he plans to have the priest who baptized him, Father Anthony Clark, in his corner Monday night, thus providing the missionary’s benediction of civilization.

All the same, there is some genuine evidence that Mugabi comes by his nickname honestly. The story is told variously but the most reliable account is as follows:

It seems that while in Mugabi’s new hometown of Miami, somebody got the highly original idea to pose Mugabi in a zoo staring down a gorilla. It was what they like to call a picture opportunity. Well, Mugabi and the gorilla were chatting it up for the photographers when a rainstorm developed. Everybody broke for cover, except for Mugabi and the gorilla. When somebody thought to look back they saw Mugabi and the gorilla, still standing there, both waving back at them.

You can believe that story or not, although there are responsible people who swear to it. What is most certainly fact is that Mugabi, 26, is an animal when he is uncaged in the ring. Since turning pro after the 1980 Olympics, in which he won a silver medal, Mugabi has won all 26 fights. More spectacular is the fact that he has won all 26 of them by knockout, 10 of those in the first round and six in the second round. Only one fight, in which he claims he was thumbed, went past six rounds.

To be sure, his ring record does not read like a Who’s Who of boxing. And his style is unorthodox enough that his trainer, George Francis, despairs of teaching a correct punch. And who but Muhammad Ali ever got away with holding his hands so low. Still, he evidently can punch and thus has the traditional puncher’s chance in the ring with the veteran Hagler.

Mugabi is something of a cipher in this promotion as his English is limited. He is from Uganda, and his first language is Swahili. So his conversation in the week before the fight has been largely confined to “I gonna knock heem out!” He can speak more English than that, he just doesn’t.

This does the promotion no real harm because his manager, Mickey Duff, is voluble enough for the two of them. Duff, who co-discovered Mugabi while watching the 1980 Olympics on television, freely dispenses the Mugabi story, and parts of it are no doubt true.

While Duff has tended to cast Mugabi as the Jungle Boy, appearing from out of the trees to gaze on civilization, others cast him in a more urban light. According to English trainer George Francis, who has handled such fellow Ugandans as Cornelius Boza-Edwards, Mugabi, son of a maintainance worker, was more of a street kid in Kampala. “I think he learned most of what he knows about boxing on those streets,” Francis says.

All agree however, that there was a feral quality to Mugabi. “Kampala is town of haves and have-nots,” Francis says. “And he was a have-not.” Yes, Francis says, backing Duff up on this one, “He may have climbed through one or two windows for food.”

But by then Mugabi, age 9, had discovered his real meal ticket, boxing. And in a program backed by then-dictator Idi Amin, he prospered. Mugabi recalls that Amin was mightily disposed to his boxers and was a frequent visitor to the Lugobo gym. He liked to spar with the young boxers--he had been an amateur heavyweight boxer himself--and once took the 12-year-old Mugabi into the ring. Mugabi showed considerable restraint and let the man they called “Da da” stand as long as he wanted.

Amin would allow the team the use of his private jet and hand out spending money. For the Olympics, he gave each of his boxers $500. So Mugabi no longer had to play the back-door man, wiggling through the kitchen windows of the English plantation owners.

Both Duff and Francis describe a simple man when they talk of Mugabi. His pleasures are simple and few--karate videos and music round the clock. In a recent press conference, Mugabi sat holding his recorder, as if he were suddenly going to tootle out a song.

Certainly he has little patience for the technology available to him. Duff has gotten films of Hagler’s fights and has talked Mugabi into watching them. “He watches for one round,” Duff says, “and then says, ‘OK, can I go now?’ His kung fu he can watch forever.”

As Mugabi does things his own way, there is little point to getting scientific with him. “He’s not stubborn,” Francis says, “just proud. He’s his own man, and it’s paid off.” So it is that Mugabi has developed a repertory of punches never seen in a ring. ‘He may be fighting inside,” Francis explains, “and he’ll simply hop back and hit you with an uppercut. And he’ll knock you out. He punches from all angles. I’ve seen him knock people out and not know how. I said to one guy, he didn’t even hit you. He says ‘feel this’ and shows me a knot on the back of his head.”

Duff is more exasperated than Francis by his charge. “He’s very stubborn, very hard to deal with,” he says. “He’s tried to pull out of every fight except this one. On the other hand, he is impossible to intimidate. This is the first opponent Hagler faces who will not be intimidated.

“John’s too primitive to be intimidated.”

James Shuler, undefeated in his 22 fights, has two wonderful credentials on his resume. He was a member of the 1980 Olympic team, possibly an even more talented group than the rich and famous 1976 gold medal winners, and a survivor of Philadelphia gyms.

As far as the Olympics go, Shuler was part of a team that included such eventual champions as welterweight Donald Curry and bantamweight Richie Sandoval. Their progress, alas, was slowed by the boycott. Shuler was especially hurt as he was a shoo-in for the Olympic gold; he had already beaten Armando Martinez, the Cuban gold-medal winner in the 156-pound division.

Shuler says he knew all along what that boycott cost him. There was the example of Sugar Ray Leonard, star of the 1976 Olympics, making mega-millions off his exposure before him. But Shuler says it really hurt when, after the 1984 Olympics, people like gold-medal winner Mark Breland began cashing in. And at the time, Shuler was having trouble getting not only money but also fights.

It was Shuler’s apparent misfortune to have signed his promotional rights away to Butch Lewis who, then as now, was primarily interested in light-heavyweight and now heavyweight champion Michael Spinks. Shuler fought only on Spinks’ undercards, and there were precious few of them.

Shuler’s trainer, veteran Eddie Futch, says: “I thought it was a crime to allow that much talent to stand idle.” Shuler fought just twice in 1984 and just twice last year. It was a felony crime to let him stand that idle.

But Shuler has been prepared for this fight with Thomas Hearns, he says, not in the ring but in Joe Frazier’s Philadelphia gym. That’s where Shuler, 26, first got interested in boxing, peeking in on his way back from swimming practice. That gym, a legendary one, is a wonderful crucible for young middleweights.

“I was training other fighters there,” Futch says, “but I remember using him as a sparring partner when he was 15. I put him in with Willie Monroe when he was training for Hagler. In fact, I still have the canceled check I paid him with for that sparring.”

It was not easy to emerge in that gym, so crowded with great middleweights. Boogaloo Watts, Cyclone Hart and Bennie Brisco all schooled in Philly gyms. Philadelphia gyms had a kind of mystique years ago, so brutal were the ring wars there. But the rap on them was that the contenders actually used themselves up in the gym and had nothing to spare at fight time. When title shots appeared, they were generally past their prime. Not one of those contenders from the ‘70s ever won a title.

Nevertheless, Shuler is grateful for the competition that was available to him and thankful he lives in a city “where the average weight is 160 pounds.”

“I come to Las Vegas,” says Shuler, “and train with two-three guys. That’s easy. In Philly, it was something different every day. I’d spar with light-heavyweights, whoever. I used to bang away at Tex Cobb (who also had experience in kick-boxing). Of course, all he’d do was laugh. It was great having Tex in the gym, except he used to kick all the bags down. Joe (Frazier) finally got him to stop doing that.”

There are more useful “Philly fighter” tricks he picked up, he says, and he expects to use them against Hearns. Unlike Mugabi, Shuler is no knockout artist, although he has kayoed 16 men. He had to go the distance in beating such big guns as Clint Jackson and James Kinchen. “I use the slick stuff of a Philly fighter,” he says.

Shuler fully understands that Hearns intends to take his head off. “He was so out-gunned against Hagler,” he says, “my guess is he’ll try and unload.”

In the meantime, Shuler, as ebullient as a carnival barker (“If you can’t buy a ticket, get your pay-per-view. Come on down!”), is wildly enthusiastic about the chance to upset Bob Arum’s money cart. “Hearns will feel like a lost fighter,” he promises, “just the other guy sitting on the side.

“And then I’ll fight Mugabi.”