A Fit Night for Them to Rain Punches

Well, it wasn’t a fit night for man or Beast.

A gelid rain fell on Las Vegas at nightfall Monday shortly followed by the fighter they call The Beast.

This is not to say The Beast was the Bust. Far from it.

All week long, the wise guys were saying John Mugabi was not that fearsome. This was no wild animal, this was just a guy in a gorilla suit. All fur and no fangs. A makeup job. A paper lion. A pussycat photographed through a monocle.

Whoever labelled John Mugabi the Beast, they said, must be the kind of guy who would jump on a chair if he saw a mouse.

If this is a Beast, they said, Marvelous Marvin Hagler is something you call out the National Guard for. A-Creature-From-The-Stone-Age. A My-God-Doctor-What-Is-It? Hide Fay Wray. Find the laboratory where they made it and burn it.

All week long, John Mugabi could be seen hanging around in the winking neon, chattering slots and garish decor of this incredible town looking as out of place as a Tibetan monk or a Salvation Army sister.

He looked like someone you might hand your shoes to. He was as soft-spoken as a monk, as polite as an usher and he always seemed to be wearing a hat two sizes too big for him and never quite to understand what everybody was saying.

Even Marvin Hagler fell for the simple little country boy con.

Everyone figured the guy who called Mugabi, the Beast, must be the same joker who calls bald-headed guys “Curly,” or professional grouches “Smiley” or fat guys “Tiny.” A guy who might call Hagler, “Happy.”

They figured this guy wasn’t going to a fight, he was going to an execution. His ferocious nickname was just a typo. It was really John “Least” Mugabi.

Marvin wouldn’t even know he had showed up, they snickered. He would just walk through him the way he walked through Thomas Hearns. He would make his fight like a guy running after a bus.

Mugabi would have no fear, they told you. That was the trouble. When you fought Marvin Hagler, fear was a good thing to have. Like the Titanic should have feared icebergs.

Well, John Mugabi got knocked out by Marvin Hagler on Monday night, but not before Marvin had reason to think he was the first guy since the real Caesars Palace to be matched with a lion.

Marvin Hagler himself is a fearsome specimen who could empty a dark room or a blind alley in a hurry if anyone got a good look at him.

But John Mugabi traded right crosses with this human fright wig all night long at the modern Caesars Palace in a fight that had all the science of a head-on train and truck crash. Hagler had a mound of flesh where his right eye had been, and his face generally looked like a sack of plums when it was over. His shaven head had welts on it a foot long and he was making his fight most of the night like a guy trying not to get thrown off a precipice.

The knockout came because the Hagler attack is as relentless as a glacier. He didn’t knock Mugabi out so much as he wore him out.

Hagler is as indestructible as a locomotive, as impervious to pain as a stuffed moose. It is hard to believe anything short of a railroad gun could hurt him.

But John Mugabi hit him with more punches in 10 rounds Monday than the last four opponents Hagler faced put together.

At the end of the 10th round, I had the fight scored 98-94 for Hagler. Hagler had hit him with everything but his stool. He had hit him high, low, under and over.

Hagler had taunted him all week long, bringing bloodied dolls to press conferences, boasting that he would “feast on the beast.” Mugabi resented it. Mugabi didn’t win the fight, but he won respect. He carried the fight to Hagler which is a little like climbing a tree after a leopard.

So, no one thinks John Mugabi’s nickname is a joke any more, least of all Marvin who was making noises about retiring at fight’s end. No one is any longer saying the “e” and “a” in the nickname should be replaced with “u.” In fact, if Hagler retires, they can leave out the “a” and have John Mugabi pegged exactly. John “The Best.”