40 years later: How Hagler-Hearns heralded a new age of boxing with an all-time classic fight

Later it would go down as the greatest eight minutes in boxing history. The first round would be remembered by many as the single greatest round the sport had ever produced. But in the months leading up to that historic night 40 years ago today, there were serious doubts that Marvin Hagler vs. Thomas Hearns would ever take place.

And what a shame that would have been. Hearns, the lanky, mercurial knockout artist who’d gone up in weight and flattened Roberto Duran with one hissing cobra strike of a right hand. Hagler, the hard-headed slugger with a chip on his shoulder, always certain that the boxing establishment was out to cheat him any way it could.

They were practically made for each other. And on April 15, 1985, they made magic together in one furious fight that defined an era. But this was one classic fight that came dangerously close to dying on the vine.

To understand the full story, you have to first understand the strange world of the 1980s. The early and middle part of that decade was, in many ways, a ridiculous time for American culture as a whole. But it was also a tricky time for boxing in particular.

The Muhammad Ali era had ended. The Mike Tyson era had not yet begun. The sport had attractions, for lack of a better word, but it was still starving for real stars. “Sugar” Ray Leonard announced his retirement in 1982 (though would soon change his mind), and there was real concern over whether heirs apparent like Hearns and Hagler could drive fan interest.

In Don Stradley’s excellent book, “The War: Hagler-Hearns and Three Rounds for the Ages,” he describes the ‘80s boxing scene as a bizarre collection of differing characters, all playing separate roles:

“It was a bit like an old Hollywood movie studio, with a leading man (Leonard), a suave, aristocratic type (Alexis Arguello), a brooding gunslinger (Hearns), some matinee idols (Ray Mancini; Sean O’Grady). a crazy stuntman (Aaron Pryor), a dastardly villain (Don King), and plenty of eccentric types, from Frank “The Animal” Fletcher and “Bigfoot” Martin, to Craig “Gator” Bodzianowksi, a stalwart out of Chicago who fought for several years wearing a prosthetic leg.”

Hagler was something of an odd-man-out in that bunch. He had a classic boxing origin story. Following the 1967 riots, his family moved from Newark, New Jersey, to Brockton, Massachusetts — famous as the home of heavyweight boxing champ Rocky Marciano. As a teenager, Hagler got beaten up at a party by a local kid named Dornell Wigfall, who trained at a nearby boxing gym. It was a humiliating experience. Legend has it that the dispute originated over a girl, and Wigfall easily whipped Hagler before stealing his jacket.

Hagler couldn’t accept this. His dignity demanded that he learn to fight. Since Wigfall learned his craft in a boxing gym, so did Hagler. He would go on to beat Wigfall twice in the boxing ring, both times in events at the Brockton High School gym, the second time by knockout.

But while battling his way up the ranks throughout the 1970s, Hagler struggled to gain the acceptance and appreciation of the boxing world. In an HBO “Legendary Nights” feature on the Hagler-Hearns bout, Hagler recalled former heavyweight champ Joe Frazier telling him that he had three strikes against him: “One, you’re southpaw. Two, you’re good. And three, you’re Black.”

Hagler had amassed a string of knockout finishes, but was devastated when his first bid for the middleweight title ended in a draw, allowing then champion Vito Antuofermo to retain the belt. That 1979 fight was Hagler’s first professional bout in Las Vegas, and it would forever remain a sore spot for him. He was convinced that boxing’s power brokers wanted to keep him out of the limelight — and Vegas was the snakepit that made it possible.

Hagler’s response to this was to double down on a knockout-seeking style. He finally won the middleweight title via TKO the following year in London, then finished nine of his next 10 bouts inside the distance leading up to his meeting with Hearns.

Hearns had come up as a brooding, dangerous welterweight. At 6-foot-2, he was tall and skinny for the weight class, but with a sharp jab and vicious right hand that cracked like a whip. He’d learned his craft in Emanuel Steward’s Detroit gym, and after making his pro debut with a second-round knockout in 1977, he went 18 straight fights before he ever saw a judges’ scorecard. Few of Hearns’ early fights went more than three rounds, and he won his first welterweight title just three years after his pro debut.

In 1981, Hearns faced Leonard in a welterweight title unification bout billed as “The Showdown.” Leonard broke all previous boxing records (including his own) with a guaranteed purse of slightly above $10 million (equivalent to about $36.7 million in 2025 dollars) for the fight. Hearns had a guaranteed purse of $5.1 million, by far the biggest payday of his career, launching him into a stratosphere of wealth he could hardly have imagined when he first began his pro career just four years earlier.

Hearns was leading on the scorecards with Leonard’s cornerman, Angelo Dundee, famously telling him between rounds: “You’re blowing it, son!” With one eye nearly swollen shut, Leonard rallied and knocked Hearns through the ropes before finally stopping him in Round 14.

Hearns responded by winning his next eight fights, going up in weight to capture the junior middleweight title, which he defended in dramatic fashion with a blistering second-round knockout of Duran in 1984. Duran had been stopped only once at that point, when he dropped the welterweight title to Leonard in 1980. Even Hagler had been unable to put him away. But one clean shot from Hearns’ long right hand dropped him face-first on the canvas, asleep before he even touched the floor.

This helped drive interest in a meeting between two of the world’s best knockout artists, Hagler and Hearns. By this point, Hearns was the more famous of the two and certainly the better paid. Hagler, who’d defended the middleweight title 10 consecutive times over four years, felt increasingly disappointed with his payouts and his prestige.

He struggled even to get broadcasters to use his preferred nickname: “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler. It was as if, in their minds, that kind of glamour didn’t fit with this steely, stubborn, bullet-headed figure they saw in the ring. In 1983, he finally went before a probate court to legally change his name in order to force the issue, which did at least generate him some quick publicity, even if it was also done to spite ABC’s “Wide World of Sports.”

At first, the prospect of a Hagler-Hearns fight did not seem like a guaranteed financial hit. First, there were contractual issues. Through his association with promoter Bob Arum’s Top Rank, Hagler was an early signee with HBO. But in those days, HBO was far from a powerhouse in either television or sports. In Stradley’s book on the Hagler-Hearns fight, he notes that when Hagler signed with HBO in 1980, it was “still associated with roadside motels and barrooms, the telltale sign announcing ‘Free HBO.’”

As a premium cable service at a time when any cable subscription at all was seen as a luxury, HBO had around 5 million subscribers — out of 78 million American households with a TV. Hagler’s best market was, unsurprisingly, the greater Boston area near where he’d grown up in Brockton. There, according to Stradley, HBO had only 9,000 subscribers — but that number had gone up more than 10% just prior to Hagler’s first HBO fight, indicating that he did have some potential to move the needle in the New England market.

But as he touted a potential Hagler-Hearns fight, Arum didn’t necessarily want to go with HBO. He was more interested in closed-circuit TV, an early version of pay-per-view that was potentially more lucrative. (It was not without issues, however. Just a few weeks before the Hagler-Hearns fight, the very first WrestleMania had aired over closed-circuit, though audiences in some venues paid for a blank screen and nearly rioted as a result.)

The bigger issue was HBO’s contractual claim to the fight. While the two sides battled it out, and while Arum began to see that general fan interest in the bout wasn’t great enough to guarantee returns that would equal what he’d promised the various stakeholders, the whole event was beginning to look like a financial disaster.

Then, a very lucky (unlucky) break: Hearns hurt his pinky finger. While jogging one morning, Hearns tripped over a loose shoelace. He put his hand out to break his fall and later noticed a sharp pain in the little finger of his all-important right hand. Initially, reports said it was a minor injury. After a judge ruled that HBO had a legitimate contractual claim to the fight, however, ruling out the closed-circuit pay-per-view option, the injury suddenly seemed more dire.

Wouldn’t you know it? The fight had to be postponed. What a shame.

The delay was suspiciously fortuitous for Arum. It gave him more time to generate interest in the fight, and also helped him negotiate a compromise with HBO that would allow a hybrid broadcast model. Viewers in some regions would have to watch at a closed-circuit location. Others could watch with an HBO subscription. Even some non-HBO subscribers could order the fight as a stand-alone event for $15. The pay-per-view model that would come to dominate major boxing bouts over the next few decades was taking shape.

Hagler was incensed by the delay. He told reporters that for the money Hearns stood to make off the bout, he’d cut his pinky off entirely rather than miss the fight. This surliness was said to carry over into his training sessions, with stories of sparring partners getting battered on the regular.

Fellow boxer Buster Drayton, who worked with the Hagler camp at the time, said he tried to warn…