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: But what else could Hearns do to Hagler but thown the kitchen sink at him?
this question seems to suggest that hearns gave it 100% in the first fight. he didn't, because he couldn't. he had a broken hand, he couldn't throw a decent punch. the answer to the question above is "he didn't need to throw the kitchen sink, he could instead have simply hit hagler hard, as he did only once in the first fight which was where he put hagler's senses through a food-processor."
um, i really (i swear it guys!) didn't want to get partisan, but since everybody is siding with hagler here, i can't resist putting my cards on the table. we know that hagler went looking for hearns from the moment the bell went, and almost immediately hearns countered with some seriously hurtful punches. unfortunately for hearns, they were even more hurtful to himself than they were to hagler!
in any rematch, i assume that hagler would have tried, once again, to nail hearns rather than trying to box him, or frustrate him, or whatever; that view is based on the observation i have made that hagler seemed - unbelievably - to have had some kind of inferiority complex. it was never enough for hagler to whup a guy, he always had to whup the guy playing the guy's own game. of course he was plenty good enough to do this in almost all cases. but against the very top opposition, it's an unwise conceit. sugar ray leonard boxed pretty, so when hagler fought him, he wasted half the fight trying not just to beat leonard, but trying to beat him with flashy, pretty boxing. that's why he lost. if he had come out against leonard and roughed him up from round one - just as he did, incidentally, against hearns - he would have beaten leonard's ass into oblivion. where's my proof? just look at the last half of the the fight.....
he had the same sort of "i gotta prove i can beat this guy even if i make it easy for them to box as they like to box" approach when he fought hearns. it was never going to be enough for hagler just to beat hearns. he had to prove that he could take hearns' biggest shots first. why the hell else would he deliberately walk into a punching hearns, while doing everything he could to slip away from a punching leonard? having beaten (the injured) hearns the first time in three rounds, i think hagler would have employed the same "lets trade punches" routine in a second fight.
assuming that in a rematch, hagler would once again have gone straight to war with hearns he would once again have faced the same sort of counter attack. the chances of hearns breaking his hand a second time are slim; it's much more likely that hearns would have quickly handed hagler his ass on a plate. no one - not even hagler - could brazenly walk into one of those hearns nuclear attacks and survive.
anyway, that's just my view, and it could very well be total bull**** :-P
the REAL question i have remains; not "who would have won a rematch?" but "why wasn't there a rematch?" the only answer given so far is that there was no popular interest. that i find completely unconvincing! any other reasons anyone would care to advance? boxing politics? hearns scared of hagler?
this question seems to suggest that hearns gave it 100% in the first fight. he didn't, because he couldn't. he had a broken hand, he couldn't throw a decent punch. the answer to the question above is "he didn't need to throw the kitchen sink, he could instead have simply hit hagler hard, as he did only once in the first fight which was where he put hagler's senses through a food-processor."
um, i really (i swear it guys!) didn't want to get partisan, but since everybody is siding with hagler here, i can't resist putting my cards on the table. we know that hagler went looking for hearns from the moment the bell went, and almost immediately hearns countered with some seriously hurtful punches. unfortunately for hearns, they were even more hurtful to himself than they were to hagler!
in any rematch, i assume that hagler would have tried, once again, to nail hearns rather than trying to box him, or frustrate him, or whatever; that view is based on the observation i have made that hagler seemed - unbelievably - to have had some kind of inferiority complex. it was never enough for hagler to whup a guy, he always had to whup the guy playing the guy's own game. of course he was plenty good enough to do this in almost all cases. but against the very top opposition, it's an unwise conceit. sugar ray leonard boxed pretty, so when hagler fought him, he wasted half the fight trying not just to beat leonard, but trying to beat him with flashy, pretty boxing. that's why he lost. if he had come out against leonard and roughed him up from round one - just as he did, incidentally, against hearns - he would have beaten leonard's ass into oblivion. where's my proof? just look at the last half of the the fight.....
he had the same sort of "i gotta prove i can beat this guy even if i make it easy for them to box as they like to box" approach when he fought hearns. it was never going to be enough for hagler just to beat hearns. he had to prove that he could take hearns' biggest shots first. why the hell else would he deliberately walk into a punching hearns, while doing everything he could to slip away from a punching leonard? having beaten (the injured) hearns the first time in three rounds, i think hagler would have employed the same "lets trade punches" routine in a second fight.
assuming that in a rematch, hagler would once again have gone straight to war with hearns he would once again have faced the same sort of counter attack. the chances of hearns breaking his hand a second time are slim; it's much more likely that hearns would have quickly handed hagler his ass on a plate. no one - not even hagler - could brazenly walk into one of those hearns nuclear attacks and survive.
anyway, that's just my view, and it could very well be total bull**** :-P
the REAL question i have remains; not "who would have won a rematch?" but "why wasn't there a rematch?" the only answer given so far is that there was no popular interest. that i find completely unconvincing! any other reasons anyone would care to advance? boxing politics? hearns scared of hagler?
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