Commentary : Trainer Aims to Call Shots for Bout, but Misses Mark

Mike Trainer, Sugar Ray Leonard’s man, in recent days has been talking big about his grand plan for bringing off the Marvin Hagler-Leonard fight by moving Leonard into a partnership role for the promotion. There could be certain grand flaws in Trainer’s grand plan, however.

These include Hagler’s high estimate of his own importance to the fight and his long-tortured memory of the night Leonard called him down to Baltimore ostensibly to announce there would be a title fight but instead announced his retirement from boxing. Big joke on Hagler, who filed this deception under rotten tricks.

The money is so big that the Hagler-Leonard fight will be made, but not quite on the terms Trainer envisions. Trainer says he isn’t demanding an altogether equal partnership in the deal, and that Leonard would take a fraction less in the guarantees. But Trainer wants a say in calling some of the shots, like the important one of who gets to promote the fight, and assuredly it must not be Bob Arum, Trainer’s feudal enemy, to whom he always has thumbed his nose in the past.

The Trainer-Arum quarrel is mostly sourced in Trainer’s profound belief that he is a better and more productive businessman than Arum. Trainer did set new styles for maximizing the profits on behalf of Leonard, cutting out the middlemen and showing old-line promoters how to get the most money out of guarantees, percentages, closed-circuit, pay-per-view and foreign rights. As lawyer-agent, Trainer made more millions faster for Leonard than any other fighter ever knew.

All this was accomplished, though, when Leonard was top dog in the business, knocking out or licking everybody, higher on charisma than anyone since Ali, and in demand in every arena and commercial studio. There’s been a change in roles, though, with a twice-unretired Leonard seen in only one fight in four years, and that adventure not a totally happy one.

In his first comeback fight two years ago, it was a scared, tentative and inefficient Leonard who walked into a right hand and was knocked on the seat of his pants by Kevin Howard in round four. Not until the ninth round could Leonard find a way to beat his undistinguished opponent; and when Leonard announced his new retirement after the fight, his friends applauded. Their guy was inept and covered with rust, and could get hurt if he continued his comeback fantasy.

In his efforts to call the important shots in the arrangements for Leonard versus Hagler, Trainer, as well, is fantasizing. Hagler is the top dog now, unbeaten in seven years, and has moved into No. 1 popularity in the boxing business.

Thus, the Hagler camp is in charge now, and as for giving Leonard anything like parity with Hagler in the guarantees and other important matters, no way. Oh, Trainer can get the $5 million guarantee offer to Leonard upped quite a bit, but it won’t touch the whopping purse that Hagler will wind up with. With Hagler, this is a sacred principle. Bluntly, he doesn’t like Leonard, and the suggestion of “partnership” in the deal is repulsive to him.

It is remembered how Hagler a few years back threatened to quit because fellows like Leonard were making bigger purses than he, the middleweight champion. He complained that he wasn’t being appreciated, that Leonard was getting all the money from the commercials, and that he was fighting for small change. It is an emotional thing with Hagler, and with his ability to dictate terms, he isn’t receiving Leonard into anything like a warm partnership.

Trainer also is due to foul out in his effort to count Arum out as the promoter. This would be a test of Hagler’s loyalty to Arum, who has been part of the Hagler fight family for several years, the only promoter for whom he enters a ring.

Trainer recently told The New York Times, “It has not been my understanding that Hagler has signed with Arum. If he has done so, that would be foolish.”

Arum, however, is proclaiming that he “has a paper” on Hagler, spelling out that he would promote the next title defense, a believable statement. He has promoted Hagler’s last 12 title defenses. Somebody once said, “There is room but for one loyalty,” and Hagler always has been steadfast with Arum, a trait that may not yield to the brandishments of Trainer.

There is a good awareness by all concerned that Hagler-Leonard is an eminent bonanza that could total up to $30 million, maybe more, so inviting is the interest in it. Trainer has his eye on the huge fringe benefits that could accrue to Leonard, a percentage of the live gate, and closed-circuit and foreign rights, advertising on the ring posts, etc.

When Leonard was Mr. Boxing, Trainer was used to demanding these rights. But the Hagler-Arum people would take pleasure in cutting him out of these plums. Trainer’s distaste for Arum was newly revealed when he recently remarked that Arum, if he promoted the fight, stood to make big money at Leonard’s expense: “All that money is going to be there,” he said. “It’s who’s going to get it.” The saints forbid it would be Arum.

Trainer and the Hagler people have been meeting in Boston recently to hammer out terms on which there could be a fight. He has been bypassing Arum and talking directly to Pat Petronelli, Hagler’s co-manager; Morris Goldings, Hagler’s attorney; and Peter Mareb, their accountant. But they are all Arum’s people, Arum’s friends. Sort of family. Like it or not, the spirit of Bob Arum is not far from the negotiations.

The fight, when it comes off, probably in March in Las Vegas, has all the elements of high curiosity that make for big gates: mainly, can Leonard, who will have trained an entire year, regain his old and wonderful skills? Or would the Kevin Howard experience and his once-detached retina (in boxing, everything above the belt is fair territory) leave Leonard so inhibited, so wary, he’d be putty? The shame would be that when both men were at their peak four or five years ago, Leonard would have won this fight.