Brooding middleweight’s brilliant career was frequently fuelled by indignities and insults, both perceived and real
For the duration of his time at the front of the American sporting consciousness, Marvin Hagler was perceived as someone fighting with chips on both shoulders. This, after all, was a man who was so offended at the refusal of his request to be introduced by his nickname of “Marvelous” that he changed his name by court order.
Hagler, who died on Saturday at his New Hampshire home at the age of 66, has been remembered as not only one of the greatest prizefighters in the storied history of boxing’s middleweight division but one its finest at any weight in any era. The undisputed champion at 160lb from 1980 until 1987, he occupied centre stage as one of the sport’s “Four Kings”, along with Sugar Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns and Roberto Durán, whose epochal 1980s round-robin series of classic fights represented a golden era that is romanticised to the present day.
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