Only Hearns Has Any Fight Left : Leonard, Hagler Will Just Watch the Title Bout

Three of the more interesting middleweights of our time, their careers curiously entangled over the years, will be in or around the ring here tonight.

Only one of them, however. will be in the satin trunks of the boxer. The two others will recline at ringside in cummerbunded splendor.

The middleweight division has come to that: Its most charismatic fighters dress up in tuxedoes, supplying the blow-by-blow accounts for the ones they left behind.

In this case, Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvelous Marvin Hagler, both part-time announcers and the only two men who have beaten Thomas Hearns, will be spiffed-up onlookers as boxing’s most famous victim goes about his trade, fighting Juan Roldan, another of Hagler’s victims, for the World Boxing Council’s vacant title.

Ordinarily, the easy hook on tonight’s fight at the Hilton Hotel is that Hearns, frustrated in the ring, can finally achieve something on paper. If he wins tonight, as most expect him to, he will have gained a fourth title, something no other fighter has been able to do, although only three have tried.

“Ray and Marvin can’t do that,” Hearns boasted the other day. “This will put me above everyone else out there.”

The easy hook, and the wrong hook. Boxing today is so fragmented by titles and sanctioning bodies that it is no longer a great trick to string numbers of titles together. A champion returns for a second helping at dinner and, boom, he’s a super-welterweight or a junior-middleweight with new heights and weights to scale. A growing boy who can pick and choose among opponents can reasonably expect a mantle full of championship belts.

Anyway, Hearns, who has held welterweight and super-welterweight and light-heavyweight titles, could win all available titles, and he’d still be remembered for his knockout loss to Leonard in 1981 and his spectacular, though equally unsuccessful fight for the middleweight title with Hagler in 1985.

“As far as the general public is concerned, Tommy has fought only two fights,” said Emmanuel Steward, Hearns’ manager since he turned pro 10 years ago. “It bothers Tommy and it bothers me.”

So it’s interesting, as Hearns (44-2) tries to make history by flattening Argentine strongman Roldan (63-3-2), that Hagler and Leonard would show up. Even if he wins, Hearns will be attended by the ghosts of defeat at ringside. It’s a cruel circumstance, to be forever haunted like that.

And if Hearns, who has won $25 million over the years, and who will earn $1.1 million more tonight, thinks he can impress either of his conquerors into coming out of retirement for a rematch, he may be mistaken. He wants it badly, says Steward, and even expects a Hagler match to be made by next April.

Leonard, however, who took on Hagler in a slick hit-and-run exercise last spring, may have no fight left. And Hagler, who went into a ridiculous exile after Leonard ended his six-year reign, only has eyes for Sugar, who is not looking back.

If all fighters hold to their intentions, it may be that these three will never again meet inside a ring. Hagler, who will help with the closed-circuit and pay-per-view telecast, showed up Tuesday and was purposely vague.

“The public knows who the real champion is,” he said. “Maybe if the public demands to see it, I would fight for the title once if there is just one champion.”

But mostly, he said, he’s content in his retirement.

Still, what fighter ever held to his intentions? Promoter Bob Arum, by keeping the fire going under this middleweight stew, will likely keep our attention for years to come. Will he or won’t he, the question applied equally to all three men.

Unfortunately, little of this interest is left for Roldan, a supporting actor if ever there was one. Roldan, though a powerful puncher, has pretty much been discounted as a contender since he was stopped in 10 rounds by Hagler in 1984. After one more fight, in fact, he disappeared for nearly two years before returning in 1986.

Since then, he has run off 11 victories, including a knockout of James Kinchen on the Hagler-Leonard under card.

This record has caused Hearns to exclaim: “I’m fighting the best fighter in the division right now. Ray Leonard is in retirement, Marvin Hagler is in retirement. Myself and Roldan are the best fighters in the division right now.”

That is probably so. Certainly, with aforementioned retirements, they are the only well known ones. When Leonard gained and then quickly vacated his world middleweight championship, the division went into anonymous disarray.

Can you name the World Boxing Assn. and International Boxing Federation champions? Can you say Frank Tate (IBF) and Sumbu Kalambay (WBA)? Nobody can really say how Sumbu achieved this.

That said, there is some curiousity about tonight’s scheduled 12-rounder. Hearns, having skipped middleweight in his trio of titles, will be coming down in weight for this one--he weighed 165 as late as Monday--leaving skeptics to wonder if the weight loss won’t affect him and if he’ll once more be left dead on his legs by a powerful puncher.

Still, everybody he has fought, excepting Leonard and Hagler, has tasted Hearns big right hand and Roldan, who suffers a six-inch height disadvantage and a nine-inch difference in reach, better have brought his appetite.

The Roldan camp is confident, though. Arum says Roldan’s manager, Luis Abba took a $45,000 advance out of Roldan’s $250,000 purse and bet it on his fighter. So at least somebody will retain an interest in Roldan’s chances tonight.

Co-featured on tonight’s card is an IBF light-heavyweight title fight between champion Bobby Czyz and Charles Williams.