Leonard Shrugs Off Hearns the Hateful

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. —  The rumblings from Detroit have been loud and ominous: Thomas Hearns is driven by hatred. Thomas Hearns is serious for this one. This time, the Hit Man is going to teach Sugar Ray a lesson.

The talk has traveled along the boxing grapevine and settled here on the Gold Coast, under a large white tent on the lush grounds of the PGA Sheraton Resort, where Sugar Ray Leonard is training for his rematch with Hearns on Monday at Caesars Palace. And in Leonard’s camp, where never is heard a discouraging word, it is all shrugged off like so much more hot air.

“I don’t know what’s in Tommy’s mind,” said Leonard, looking cool and refreshed despite sparring seven rounds in the muggy, 95-degree midday heat. “And frankly, I don’t care. If that’s what he needs, fine. But I really don’t see how it can raise his level of ability.”

Leonard’s attorney and business adviser, Mike Trainer, puts it another way: “Tommy likes to talk tough from a distance, but when he’s around Ray, he’s completely different. If Ray were to tell him, ‘Tommy, go stand over by that palm tree, we’re going to do an interview there in five minutes,’ Tommy would walk over there, like a trained dog, waiting. He’s in awe of Ray.”

And that has been the general feeling in the Leonard camp toward the fight that Hearns admits has consumed his thoughts and depleted his energies during the past eight years. A kind of smug certainty. An attitude that clearly says, “We own Tommy Hearns.”

It is an attitude that has been well-earned. Since their last meeting, on Sept. 16, 1981, Leonard has, in his catch-phrase, shocked the world time and again: the detached retina; the premature retirement; the first abortive comeback against Kevin Howard in 1984; the dramatic comeback victory over Marvin Hagler in 1987. Most recently, the unprecedented winning of two titles in one night, for a career total of five, with a spectacular KO over Golden Boy Donny Lalonde last November.

In the meantime, Hearns has gone nowhere but down. Sure, he became the first man to win four and then five world titles, even sneaking in front of Leonard by three days when he hung on by his fingernails to beat James Kinchen Nov. 4. But he has also suffered the disappointment of that sensational knockout loss to Hagler in 1985, and seen his stock plummet even faster than his body after being hit with Iran Barkley’s right hand in June 1988. Clearly, the Hit Man is by far the more diminished of the two. Consequently, Team Sugar considers Hearns a mere steppingstone on Leonard’s continuing path to further greatness. In the immediate future, Leonard is expected to go on to yet another big-money rematch, against the rejuvenated Roberto Duran if Leonard beats Hearns.

“I don’t have anything against Tommy Hearns,” Leonard says. “I just want to beat him up.”

What is it that keeps Leonard going? Certainly it can’t be money: For the Hagler and Lalonde fights alone, Leonard took in some $20 million, and he gave up a rich man’s retirement to take those fights. Nor the glory: There is virtually nothing more he can do in a ring to enhance his reputation, and a loss can only damage it. What is it, then, that continues to drive Leonard, despite a bulging bank account, two surgically repaired eyes and a birth certificate that says Sugar Ray is now on the twilight side of 33 years old?

“No one seems to understand this,” he said, “but I’m in a business I do well, very well. I call the shots. I’m in control. When I don’t feel like doing this anymore, I’ll stop. I’m 33 years old, I have two sons. I tell them what to do. Nobody tells me what to do.”

And he shrugs off those well-intentioned souls who recommend he retire for his own safety with a curt: “I care about myself a lot more than you do, my friend.”

“Ray does this for one reason,” Trainer said. “Because he loves to win. Or more correctly, he can’t bear to lose. To anybody. Especially this guy.”

He keeps fighting, then, for the right simply to be Sugar Ray Leonard, to tell the world to take a flying leap if he feels like it and to continue to exert his dominance over other men his size--on his terms, of course. Before the Hagler fight, there was carping over Leonard’s demands on ring size (large, so he could dance); glove size (large, to blunt some of Hagler’s power) and bout distance (short, so his long-idle legs and lungs would not be overtaxed). Before the Lalonde fight, Leonard was criticized for insisting that Lalonde, then the WBC light-heavyweight champion, weigh no more than 168 pounds so that he, Leonard, could win both Lalonde’s crown and the newly created WBC super-middleweight title, to which he had just been designated the No. 1 contender.

Now, the gripe is that Leonard has carefully waited long enough to insure that Hearns would be washed up before Leonard granted him a rematch of their epic first battle, which Hearns led after 13 rounds before Leonard rallied for a dramatic 14th-round TKO. “I’ve never considered myself a typical fighter,” Leonard said. “And I don’t care to just engage in fights. I compete in events.”

While many in boxing believe Leonard-Hearns II will not really be a fight--Leonard is a 3-1 favorite--it certainly is an event. The 15,000-seat Caesars Palace stadium is a sellout, and closed-circuit and pay-per-view television sales could add $2 million to Leonard’s $14 million guarantee, the biggest payday of his career. And he has trained accordingly, as if Hearns were a young, rising stud and not the washed-up warrior Leonard’s camp seems to consider him.

In training, he has sparred seven, eight, 10 rounds daily, against tough sparring partners instructed not to hold back. He has trained his body down to a lean 162, and takes frequent peeks in a large mirror, even while sparring. He even rehearses those trademark moves that look so spontaneous in the ring--the hands-down, bug-eyed taunt, the bolo punch, the modified Ali Shuffle, as well as an assortment of smiles, winks and sneers.

Says Trainer: “Ray doesn’t do anything that he doesn’t practice.”