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quoted from article by Graham Houston:
"Even now fight fans debate the decision rendered in the bout between Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvelous Marvin Hagler. In Sorcery at Caesars, Steve Marantz, who covered the event for The Boston Globe, provides an informative and diverting look back at the fight, tracing the steps of each man to the magical night at Caesars Palace in 1987 before examining the fight itself and its aftermath.
“Magical” is probably the right word. Leonard not only took Hagler’s middleweight title with a display of ring wizardry, he also, as the author noted, in a sense made Hagler disappear: the former champion dropped from sight, retired from boxing and even moved to Italy.
In Marantz’s view, Leonard set up Hagler in boxing’s version of a classic sting operation.
Sugar Ray picked exactly the right time to fight Hagler, scored subtle psychological points in the build-up and used the perfect, almost sleight-of-hand tactics in the bout itself to get away with the decision.
The author deals even-handedly with the out-of-ring problems of both men — the infidelities, ******* abuse and, in Hagler’s case, episodes of heavy drinking, but his sympathies seem to rest with Marvelous Marvin, the grind-it-out professional against the glitzy trickster. Or, in Marantz’s metaphorical interpretation of the two men: “Leonard was Hollywood, the catwalk, sushi, desktop com*****g and the future. Hagler was Main Street, a 30-year mortgage, a burger with fries, a factory that closed, and the past.”
Hagler had his character defects, but Leonard comes across as having a dual personality, with deviousness not too far below the surface.
It seems that Hagler considered Leonard a friend and confided to him that he was weary of boxing, that the old drive was missing. Leonard immediately sensed that now was the right time to negotiate a fight with Hagler: “All of these things I heard him say was not from a guy who was still concerned about boxing ... and I used that to my advantage.”
However, Leonard did things his way, subtly, some might say slyly, letting some time pass, then suggesting that Hagler make the phone call to set the wheels in motion — in other words making it seem that the champion was the one issuing the challenge.
At the showbiz-style press conference to announce the fight, Marantz writes, Hagler wore a sensible suit while Leonard looked sensational in a tapered, white leather, custom-made $1,200 Italian jacket, immediately establishing which fighter was the star of the show, or, as Marantz puts it: “No question which was the tortoise and which the hare.”
Marantz’s account of the big fight itself contains comments from the three judges and the reasons why they scored rounds the way they did, with Mexico’s Jo Jo Guerra predictably sticking to his guns that Leonard had in effect outclassed Hagler.
The author acknowledges Leonard’s talent as a remarkable fighter, the guts as well as the guile, noting the way that Sugar Ray fought his way out of trouble in a gruelling ninth round: “At the instant when it seemed Leonard must crumble, his gloves came alive.”
When reviewing a work such as this I always wonder what it will tell me that I didn’t already know, and Sorcery at Caesars told me quite a lot while reminding me of things that I had forgotten. For instance, the Hagler camp vetoed Harry Gibbs as a judge, thinking that the British official might favour Leonard’s stylish boxing. The Hagler people apparently forgot that Gibbs had scored Roberto Duran the winner over Leonard in Montreal. Instead of Gibbs, Mexican judge Guerra was approved by the Hagler side as the international official, and we all know what happened there — and, irony of ironies, Gibbs later told reporters that when he watched the fight he had Hagler winning.
One minor quibble: When writing about Leonard’s path to the Olympic light-welterweight gold-medal bout in 1976, Marantz records that Sugar Ray beat “a Swede, Russian, East German and a Pole” — in fact, Leonard also defeated Britain’s Clinton McKenzie, in the third series, at the Montreal Olympics; Leonard had to get through five opponents to reach the final. Leonard’s win over McKenzie was a unanimous decision under the old, conventional way of scoring Olympic bouts (20 points to a winner of the round), but the south London southpaw put up a strong showing and one of the five judges had Leonard ahead by just one point, 59-58. McKenzie told British reporters: “Leonard thought he had an easy job, but he found he made a mistake.”
With that out of the way, I can cheerfully report that I found Sorcery at Caesars to be an engrossing read. When I put the book down for a while, I was always eager to pick it up again to continue following the author’s narrative, and I can’t give a higher recommendation than that."
anyone read it?
you know, if you were around during the leonard/duran/hearns/hagler time, many were of the opinion that leonard was an *******.
i had my beefs with his pbf like smartassing. and thought he went over the line on many occasions in his bad mouthing,womanizing and drugging.
i never won a bet against him!
but he got thru it and i consider him a gentleman and an asset to boxing now
"Even now fight fans debate the decision rendered in the bout between Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvelous Marvin Hagler. In Sorcery at Caesars, Steve Marantz, who covered the event for The Boston Globe, provides an informative and diverting look back at the fight, tracing the steps of each man to the magical night at Caesars Palace in 1987 before examining the fight itself and its aftermath.
“Magical” is probably the right word. Leonard not only took Hagler’s middleweight title with a display of ring wizardry, he also, as the author noted, in a sense made Hagler disappear: the former champion dropped from sight, retired from boxing and even moved to Italy.
In Marantz’s view, Leonard set up Hagler in boxing’s version of a classic sting operation.
Sugar Ray picked exactly the right time to fight Hagler, scored subtle psychological points in the build-up and used the perfect, almost sleight-of-hand tactics in the bout itself to get away with the decision.
The author deals even-handedly with the out-of-ring problems of both men — the infidelities, ******* abuse and, in Hagler’s case, episodes of heavy drinking, but his sympathies seem to rest with Marvelous Marvin, the grind-it-out professional against the glitzy trickster. Or, in Marantz’s metaphorical interpretation of the two men: “Leonard was Hollywood, the catwalk, sushi, desktop com*****g and the future. Hagler was Main Street, a 30-year mortgage, a burger with fries, a factory that closed, and the past.”
Hagler had his character defects, but Leonard comes across as having a dual personality, with deviousness not too far below the surface.
It seems that Hagler considered Leonard a friend and confided to him that he was weary of boxing, that the old drive was missing. Leonard immediately sensed that now was the right time to negotiate a fight with Hagler: “All of these things I heard him say was not from a guy who was still concerned about boxing ... and I used that to my advantage.”
However, Leonard did things his way, subtly, some might say slyly, letting some time pass, then suggesting that Hagler make the phone call to set the wheels in motion — in other words making it seem that the champion was the one issuing the challenge.
At the showbiz-style press conference to announce the fight, Marantz writes, Hagler wore a sensible suit while Leonard looked sensational in a tapered, white leather, custom-made $1,200 Italian jacket, immediately establishing which fighter was the star of the show, or, as Marantz puts it: “No question which was the tortoise and which the hare.”
Marantz’s account of the big fight itself contains comments from the three judges and the reasons why they scored rounds the way they did, with Mexico’s Jo Jo Guerra predictably sticking to his guns that Leonard had in effect outclassed Hagler.
The author acknowledges Leonard’s talent as a remarkable fighter, the guts as well as the guile, noting the way that Sugar Ray fought his way out of trouble in a gruelling ninth round: “At the instant when it seemed Leonard must crumble, his gloves came alive.”
When reviewing a work such as this I always wonder what it will tell me that I didn’t already know, and Sorcery at Caesars told me quite a lot while reminding me of things that I had forgotten. For instance, the Hagler camp vetoed Harry Gibbs as a judge, thinking that the British official might favour Leonard’s stylish boxing. The Hagler people apparently forgot that Gibbs had scored Roberto Duran the winner over Leonard in Montreal. Instead of Gibbs, Mexican judge Guerra was approved by the Hagler side as the international official, and we all know what happened there — and, irony of ironies, Gibbs later told reporters that when he watched the fight he had Hagler winning.
One minor quibble: When writing about Leonard’s path to the Olympic light-welterweight gold-medal bout in 1976, Marantz records that Sugar Ray beat “a Swede, Russian, East German and a Pole” — in fact, Leonard also defeated Britain’s Clinton McKenzie, in the third series, at the Montreal Olympics; Leonard had to get through five opponents to reach the final. Leonard’s win over McKenzie was a unanimous decision under the old, conventional way of scoring Olympic bouts (20 points to a winner of the round), but the south London southpaw put up a strong showing and one of the five judges had Leonard ahead by just one point, 59-58. McKenzie told British reporters: “Leonard thought he had an easy job, but he found he made a mistake.”
With that out of the way, I can cheerfully report that I found Sorcery at Caesars to be an engrossing read. When I put the book down for a while, I was always eager to pick it up again to continue following the author’s narrative, and I can’t give a higher recommendation than that."
anyone read it?
you know, if you were around during the leonard/duran/hearns/hagler time, many were of the opinion that leonard was an *******.
i had my beefs with his pbf like smartassing. and thought he went over the line on many occasions in his bad mouthing,womanizing and drugging.
i never won a bet against him!
but he got thru it and i consider him a gentleman and an asset to boxing now
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