For when the eight minutes were over with, Hearns was on the canvas and Hagler, his face butchered by Tommy’s beating, was triumphant. Hearns may have won the battles, but Hagler won The War. Certainly the best three-round match ever fought. The resulting brawl is widely recognized as three of the most exciting rounds in boxing history. The Eight Minutes of Fury consisted of essentially three battles of three minutes each, and Hearns disregarded Steward’s advice to avoid brawling with the ferocious Hagler. Still, Hagler had 10 title defenses on his resume before The War.īut in order to win a war, you have to survive the battles. Hagler was in his fifth year of ruling the middleweight class, but Hearns represented perhaps the biggest threat to that status in quite some time. Hearns moved up in weight from junior middleweight in order to meet Hagler for the belt. Hagler, who passed away suddenly last week at age 66, was the undisputed middleweight champion and Hearns the challenger. He entered the ring with the Detroiter Hearns sporting a 60-2-2 record ![]() Hagler was a beast, no question about it. “That was playing right into Marvin’s hands,” Steward said. Fight experts began calling it “Eight minutes of fury.”Įmanuel Steward, Hearns’s longtime trainer, told me years ago in his living room, where I was in 2006 before moderating a discussion about boxing for a local sports magazine, that he begged Tommy to not get into a brawl with Hagler on that April night in 1985. As for post-billing, The War soon was renamed. ![]() It happened almost 36 years ago, but the images are seared in my mind’s eye. Sadly for Hearns, he took the name too literally. Some monikers come afterward in hindsight, such as the Thrilla in Manila or the Rumble in the Jungle. It was flashed by Tommy Hearns, moments before Marvelous Marvin Hagler disposed of the Hit Man/Motor City Cobra at Caesars Palace in Paradise, NV on April 15, 1985.Įvery big fight is billed with a branded name.
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