Sport

One morning in the Europa Hotel waiting for Tommy Hearns

Brendan Crossan

Brendan Crossan

Brendan is a sports reporter at The Irish News. He has worked at the media outlet since January 1999 and specialises in GAA, soccer and boxing. He has been the Republic of Ireland soccer correspondent since 2001 and has covered the 2002 and 2006 World Cup finals and the 2012 European Championships

Tommy Hearns was one of the greatest boxers in the last century
Tommy Hearns was one of the greatest boxers in the last century Tommy Hearns was one of the greatest boxers in the last century

MY best interview? That’s easy. Tommy Hearns. Without a shadow of doubt. Tuesday October 19 2004.

The great man and I met. I was five rookie years into my career with The Irish News with more than a few rough edges.

My phone rang around 8.30am. It was my editor, Thomas Hawkins.

I was still in bed and wasn’t expecting his call.

Thomas: ‘Brendan, can you get down to the Europa Hotel?’

Me: ‘When?’

Thomas: ‘As soon as you can. Tommy Hearns and Emanuel Steward are flying out today but there’s a chance we’ll get an interview with them before they leave. I can’t guarantee it, but Damian said to come down...’

Damian McCann was the man who set up the interview. A local boxing fan, Damian helped establish the Kronk Gym in Duncairn Gardens in north Belfast and somehow managed to get the two Kronk legends to open it.

Andy Lee, who fought in the Athens Olympics that summer, was turning promoters’ heads.

He was a lovely, rangy boxer and carried a fair bit of power too. A good-looking, fiercely articulate kid from Limerick.

Steward loved rangy boxers like Lee and was keen to get him signed up while in Belfast.

It was Tuesday. My day off. Whatever plans I had for the day were ditched.

A half hour later, I’m standing in the lobby area of the Europa Hotel looking for the 'Hit Man' and feeling as nervous as a kid about to sit the 11-plus.

Damian and Andy were there too. Even back then, Andy Lee had manners and class.

Every time the elevator doors opened I swallowed deeply.

Growing up, Tommy Hearns was one of my favourite fighters of all-time and was involved in some of the most incredible fights in ring history.

The 'Hit Man' fought them all. Sugar Ray Leonard (twice), 'Marvellous' Marvin Hagler and Roberto Duran.

Hearns was the fourth king of this unbelievably talented era that defined the late 70s and 80s.

The thing about Hearns was he only managed to beat Duran out of those three great adversaries but it in no way diminished his greatness.

He won world titles from welterweight right through to light-heavy. Tommy could box and hit.

If you could put muscles on a chin, Tommy Hearns would never have lost in his 67-fight pro career.

Regarded as the greatest three rounds in boxing history, Hagler knocked Hearns out in spectacular fashion in April 1985, but not before Hearns had seriously troubled 'Marvellous' Marvin in the first round, opening a terrible cut in the centre of the champion's forehead.

But once Hagler - the more fully-fledged middleweight of the pair - caught up with Hearns midway through the third, it was as if someone had cut the strings of a puppet.

A vicious right hand to the jaw and Hearns went head-first to the canvas. It was a brutal finish to a brutal eight minutes of warfare.

Hearns fought Sugar Ray twice - in 1981 and '89 - and probably should have won on each occasion. When the pair fought in Ceasars Palace for the first time, Hearns delivered a boxing masterclass before running out of gas in the 14th.

Leonard had only fleeting success - in the sixth and seventh rounds - but could never navigate a way around Hearns' poker left jab.

In his 2011 autobiography, Sugar Ray recalled how legendary corner-man Angelo Dundee inspired him to what was an unlikely victory.

While Sugar Ray sat on his stool between the 12th and 13th rounds Angelo famously said: "You're blowing it, son. You’re blowing it."

"The way Angelo said it was as important as what he said, with the perfect mixture of urgency, encouragement and affection."

Hearns had never fought beyond 13 rounds up to that point. And the 13th proved the beginning of the end when Sugar Ray landed a solid right that sent him reeling.

He survived the round but it was merely a stay of execution before Leonard won by stoppage in the 14th.

"In his whole career Tommy had never to clinch," said his erstwhile trainer Manny Steward. "Later on, once he learned how to do it, he became expert at it - think about the fights with James Kinchen and Juan Roldan. But in the Leonard fight he never even thought about it because he didn't know how.

“I was talking to Tommy and all of a sudden his head slumped down. He was out of gas. I knew right then it was over.”

Eight years later the pair fought 12 rounds to a draw. Although Leonard had scored heavily in the fifth and 12th rounds, Hearns had Sugar Ray down in the second and 11th, which should have been enough for victory.

“The only certainty was the margin of defeat,” Leonard wrote later. “The judges must have been watching a different fight. It was ruled a draw. Tommy had a right to feel robbed…”

And so the elevator’s doors keep opening and closing.

‘Slick navy suit and searching eyes, Tommy Hearns looks like a man with bad intentions – but only for a brief second. He spots his trusty ally and former trainer Emanuel Steward in the open lobby of the Europa Hotel and then he smiles.

‘Those searching, almost brooding, eyes become the friendliest in the whole place when his face breaks into an easy grin…’

I’m standing like a goof ball with a crappy Dictaphone and a notepad. The ‘Hit Man’ sees me.

He jokes: “Have you got any ‘mulla’, coz I ain’t talking to you unless you got some ‘mulla’?”

Here he was, a true boxing legend, who nearly took Duran’s head off, shared a ring with Sugar Ray and Hagler in the bright lights of Vegas, stopped Pipino Cuevas to win his first world title in 1980, performed a Lazarus-like impression to overcome Juan Roldan in ’87 - “The Roldan fight was the most emotional,” said Manny, who sadly died in October 2012 - and even stepped up to batter light heavyweight champion Dennis Andres.

Here he was, sitting in the Europa Hotel telling me about his greatest and lowest moments in the ring.

His best moment in the ring was stopping Cuevas in two.

“I always dreamed that I would be a champion of the world, but I didn’t know it was going to happen that quick for me,” he said.

“Things started to change, my life, my family’s life. I was able to do things for my family. To move my mother out of her old house and into a new one, to bring them out of the lower part of Detroit to a much better area; it wasn’t high class, but it was better.”

It was no regular Tuesday morning. Me and the ‘Hit Man’. Like old buddies. Well, for 20 minutes in the hotel lobby area.

Who was the best he ever fought? He gave this answer.

“Marvin Hagler’s a great guy and Leonard, Duran, even Wilfred Benetiz, Pipino Cuevas... They were all right there in one division – and that’s what made boxing so interesting. And I was there.

“That was an era that people will never forget. Those were the best years of boxing. People nowadays don’t even remember what happened in boxing a few months ago.

“But when you talk about Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler, Tommy Hearns and Roberto Duran, a few decades have gone by and still people talk about these boxers like it happened yesterday.

“Our legacy is going to be here for a long time – no-one can ever change that.”