The Fight Hype Is Underway : Hagler Says He Really Wants to ‘Hurt’ Leonard

Because he is about to tell a television reporter that he yearns to injure Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler picks up what could be perceived as a dainty cup of hot tea with honey and lemon and places it out of camera range.

Dainty, tea, honey and lemon simply didn’t belong with the words Hagler had on the tip of his tongue.

“Let me tell you the importance of this fight,” Hagler had said minutes earlier, during a break in training for his April 6 date with the former welterweight champion.

“When you get inside that ring . . . what do you think Sugar Ray Leonard is training for, all secluded? You think he’s going to come in and tap me like a little girl? He’s going to be out there trying to rip my brains out, too. It’s that type of feeling.

“I plan on hurting him. I want to hurt him. I plan on hurting Sugar Ray Leonard. I want to hurt him bad. I want to smash his eyeball out. I want to knock his head. I want to rip his brains out. Seriously.”

Hagler’s baseball cap, emblazoned with the words “No Mercy,” underlines the thinking.

“I gotta stay mean, I gotta stay tough,” said the decade’s lone middleweight champion. “Only the strong survive. That’s what it is in the boxing game.”

The desert sun is particularly hot, so this day Hagler conducts his interviews in a lounge at the Canyon Hotel. It is not that he has an aversion to sweat. Hagler had run 15 miles earlier in the week.

Hagler’s training camps are as much for the mind as the body. He left his home in Brockton, Mass., on Jan. 21 and he’ll have been in Palm Springs a day short of 10 weeks when he leaves for Las Vegas on March 31.

Leonard tried kindness on last winter’s cross-country tour to hype the $100 million bout. Hagler was insulted rather than flattered.

“Why couldn’t he tell me he was going to knock my head off?” Hagler asked. “All he kept saying was that he was honored to fight me. I didn’t need to hear that. That’s why I left the tour early.”

Wherever Hagler went, he was asked about Leonard’s layoff and detached retina. Some wondered if Hagler had any sympathy. He showed none late in training.

“Reporters ask you questions like, ‘Do you think you’re not going to hit him in the eye?” Hagler said. “‘You think you’re going to hurt him? You think because you’re much bigger that it’s going to be a big factor? Leonard said he’s going to move and box and clinch and just hold. He knows he can’t beat you, but he’s going to use psychology on you and use his mind.’

“I’m going to tell you how I’m gonna beat him. I’m gonna rip his brains out and smash his eye if it’s there. That’s what I know best.”

Goody Petronelli, Hagler’s longtime trainer, chose triplets Floyd, Lloyd and Troy Weaver to be his fighter’s chief sparring partners. The three are brothers of former heavyweight champion Mike Weaver.

“They were handpicked for our opponent,” Petronelli said. “They naturally box like Leonard.”

Hagler knocked two Weavers down on the same day and the other reportedly was reluctant to climb through the ropes.

“They’re ideal sparring partners,” Hagler said. “They do the same movements. I believe they might duplicate Leonard better than Leonard himself.”

Leonard brought a 22-person entourage to Hilton Head, S.C., and recently cut his interview schedule to one day per week.

“He’s worried,” Hagler said. “This is not the Leonard that people know. He’s not doing anything differently or secretly there. I think we’ve got him a little buffaloed. He feels he’s going to make up some secret weapon. Maybe he’s making a bomb. Maybe that’s the only way he can beat me.”