{"id":348536,"date":"2025-12-16T08:47:19","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T08:47:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/348536\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T08:47:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T08:47:19","slug":"marvin-hagler-said-only-one-man-could-match-the-punching-power-of-thomas-hearns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/348536\/","title":{"rendered":"Marvin Hagler said only one man could match the punching power of Thomas Hearns"},"content":{"rendered":"

To try and knock Marvin Hagler<\/a> off his feet, you had to possess chilling knockout power.<\/p>\n

Thomas Hearns had just that. When the pair fought out their electrifying eight-minute war in April 1985, Hearns fired his cannons, but Hagler walked through the explosive artillery to mow down \u201cThe Hitman\u201d in one of boxing\u2019s greatest showdowns<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Hearns was not the only hard-hitter \u2018Marvelous\u2019 faced during his legendary career<\/a>. Speaking to The Ring<\/a> for their long-running Best I Faced series, he named the biggest punchers he ever shared a ring with.<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn Mugabi and Hearns. Because they came to fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hearns arrived for a three-round shootout, but Mugabi wanted far more when he challenged Hagler for the undisputed middleweight title a year after The War.<\/p>\n

The Ugandan-born Mugabi, the number-one contender across all three governing bodies, dragged his rival into a brutal war of attrition. Hagler was the more accurate puncher, but he still had to withstand Mugabi\u2019s relentless pressure and heavy shots to the head.<\/p>\n

By the later rounds Hagler\u2019s right eye was almost closed, yet he managed to close the show in the penultimate round with a sustained barrage of punches.<\/p>\n

His victory was expected to set up a September rematch with Hearns, while Donald Curry \u2014 who had retained his WBA welterweight title a month earlier \u2014 was targeting a move up to 160lbs to challenge the champion. Neither man got their wish. After beating Mugabi, Hagler declared that it may have been his final fight.<\/p>\n

The middleweight machine returned just once more, in April 1987, when he faced Sugar Ray Leonard and suffered his first defeat in 11 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To try and knock Marvin Hagler off his feet, you had to possess chilling knockout power. Thomas Hearns…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-348536","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}