It sounds like the setup for a lousy joke: “Michael J. Fox, Whoopi Goldberg and Sugar Ray Leonard are sitting in the bathroom of a suite at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas … ”
Forty years ago today, on March 10, 1986, Marvelous Marvin Hagler successfully defended the world middleweight championship for the 12th time, knocking out John “The Beast” Mugabi in the 11th round of a punishing scrap at Caesars’ outdoor arena. It was a historic bout, in ways known at the time (it launched Showtime’s boxing program) and unknown at the time (it went down as the final victory in Hagler’s Hall of Fame career).
But it is best remembered as the fight that made a far more historically significant bout, Leonard vs. Hagler, possible.
And it was in that bathroom of Fox’s suite at Caesars after the fight that Sugar Ray started dreaming aloud to his two celebrity friends.
Fox was a 24-year-old newly established box-office force fresh off 1985 summer hits Back to the Future and Teen Wolf, and he was six months away from winning his first Emmy for Family Ties. Goldberg was a 30-year-old suddenly famous comedian who would be attending the Oscars in two weeks as a Best Actress nominee for The Color Purple.
And Leonard – well, Leonard was a 29-year-old retired former champion who, aside from one disappointing comeback attempt, hadn’t fought in four years.
But he found himself thinking about fitting in a little better with those other two active, thriving entertainers with whom he was powwow-ing in the lavatory.
“Michael, I can beat Hagler,” Leonard said to Fox.
That line of thinking, and that itch to return to action, were all because of what he saw from Hagler in the ring that drizzly, chilly, 45-degree night in the desert.
The Hagler-Mugabi card, also featuring Thomas Hearns’ 73-second knockout of James Shuler, was intended to set up Hagler-Hearns II. After their “Eight Minutes of Fury” on April 15, 1985, this was your prototypical marination doubleheader, ahead of a rematch tentatively targeted for November ’86.
Hagler vs. Mugabi was originally supposed to happen in November ’85, but Hagler had to pull out with a back injury suffered in training. So Hagler and Hearns both ended up with 11-month layoffs before they returned to the scene of their three-round classic to take on a pair of undefeated, power-punching foes on a Top Rank card broadcast on a pay-cable network dabbling for the first time in live boxing.
As recorded in George Kimball’s book Four Kings, Hagler sparred with half-brother Robbie Sims, Alex Ramos and Bobby Patterson in preparation for the Mugabi fight, and in the final sparring session, four days before fight night, Patterson knocked the champ down with a left hook. Hagler wasn’t hurt – there were witnesses who said in a real fight it likely would have been ruled a slip – but in retrospect, it fits in with the narrative that maybe Marvelous Marvin was beginning to decline.
His age remains a subject of debate. His personal photographer, Angie Carlino, told me in 2011 for the Grantland oral history of Leonard-Hagler that “Hagler, I think, fudged on his age a little bit. … I remember the first time his birth certificate read 1952, and then all of a sudden it became ’54.” If that’s the case, it means he was nearing his 34th birthday, not his 32nd, when he stepped into the ring to face the 26-year-old Mugabi.
Hagler did that stepping to the strains of James Brown’s “Living in America.” If the presence of young Goldberg and Fox at ringside (not to mention Burt Reynolds visible throughout the fight whenever the hard camera angle was used) didn’t fully stamp Hagler-Mugabi as an artifact of the mid-’80s, then the middleweight king’s adoption of Apollo Creed’s Rocky IV entrance music certainly did.
Mugabi wasn’t quite Ivan Drago, but he was a fearsome puncher, sporting a record of 25-0, all 25 wins by KO, all but one of those inside six rounds, including 10 that ended before the round-card girls could get any steps in.
His opposition was mostly nondescript, however – the colorfully nicknamed James “Hard Rock” Green, Wilbert “Vampire” Johnson and Frank “The Animal” Fletcher represented his best wins, though they were all past their prime. So even though Mugabi boasted that perfect KO rate and the credibility that comes with a 1980 Olympic silver medal representing his native Uganda, Hagler was more than a 3-to-1 betting favorite for this Monday night fight. And Leonard went on record picking Hagler to stop Mugabi within six rounds.
What neither Leonard nor anyone else saw coming was Hagler’s decision to spend the entire first round boxing out of the orthodox stance. A switch-hitting southpaw, Hagler, 61-2-2 (51 KOs) coming in, was universally known to be at his best when boxing as a lefty, but he tried something different against Mugabi. Showtime color analyst Gil Clancy, working alongside blow-by-blow man Tim Ryan and roving reporter Al Bernstein, said it was the first time he’d ever seen “The Marvelous One” begin a fight in the right-handed stance.
The result: a clear Mugabi round. Hagler was boxing at range, most of his punches falling short, and the underdog Mugabi undoubtedly got the better of the action.
Hagler learned his lesson – at least for the time being. Committing to the same unwise strategy would arguably cost him the Leonard fight a year later. But against Mugabi, he came out for Round 2 as a southpaw and immediately landed two left hands better than anything he’d produced in the opening round.
The action quickly picked up, The Beast winging heavy blows as a controlled, disciplined war began to break out. Hagler crashed home a straight left, but Mugabi uncorked a right uppercut while he absorbed the champion’s punch.
Though Hagler won the second round, and the great majority of the rounds that followed, it was already apparent that his defensive reflexes were not what they once had been. Mugabi was frequently landing shots before Marvelous Marvin could begin to flinch.
Steam could be seen rising off Hagler’s bald head in the cold evening air in Round 3. But there was even more steam on his right jab that round. The cameras cut to Leonard at ringside after the round, wearing a Caesars ballcap, blowing on his ungloved hands to keep them warm.
Mugabi did some of his best work of the fight late in the fourth. He landed a left hook and right cross, eliciting a Hagler sneer. Then a massive counter right uppercut by the Ugandan seemed to stun the champ, and a straight right froze Hagler. This certainly wasn’t Hagler-Hearns, but it was violent and competitive in its own right.
From there, however, Hagler began to assert his dominance. He outboxed Mugabi in the fifth and began hurting the challenger in the sixth – despite referee Mills Lane interrupting his momentum to warn Hagler for a low blow. A combination drove Mugabi to the ropes – a signature image in future highlight packages – and Mugabi stiffened momentarily and tried to hold.
The Beast showed his heart, though, landing hard shots of his own shortly before the bell in one of the top contenders for 1986’s Round of the Year.
By the seventh, Mugabi was fighting completely flat-footed, his energy draining. He escaped with an even round, however, when Hagler lost a point for another punch that strayed below the beltline. Mugabi also enjoyed a few good moments when Hagler again experimented with fighting as a right-hander.
Hagler got slightly the better of a rousing eighth round, then mostly took the ninth round off, gathering his strength for a final push.
They traded bombs to open the 10th, and Marvelous Marvin, his right eye swelling shut from underneath, crashed home a left hook, a pair of looping rights and a crunching body shot. The variety of the champion’s punches was proving overwhelming, and Mugabi was running as low on ideas as he was on resistance.
Midway through the 11th round, with Mugabi dazed and trying to hold, Hagler strung together two rights, a left and two more rights, each punch playing a part in sending Mugabi to the canvas along the ropes. The best The Beast could do was get to a sitting position, where Lane counted him out at 1:29 of the round.
An exuberant Hagler pumped his right fist in the air repeatedly as his cornermen lifted him on their shoulders and paraded him around the ring. Soon, the Showtime cameras cut to Leonard and Fox, side by side in the crowd, applauding.
“That evening, we were in Michael J. Fox’s room at Caesars, and we were having a couple of glasses of wine and talking about nothing. Whoopi Goldberg, Ray Leonard, and myself,” Leonard’s close friend and assistant, Ollie Dunlap, told me in 2011. “The suite was crowded. So we ended up actually sitting in the bathroom. Somebody was sitting on the toilet, couple people sitting on the side of the bathtub, just talking about nothing in particular.
“And Ray said to me, ‘Call [manager] Mike [Trainer].’ I looked at my watch and said, ‘You know, it’s three hours’ difference, Ray. It’s the wee hours in D.C.’ He said, ‘Call Mike. Tell Mike I want to fight Hagler.’
“And we all kind of laughed. Whoopi and Michael J. Fox, they’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah, Ray. Sure, sure.’ The next day, Michael J. Fox invited us to something and we were on his little plane going back to L.A., and this conversation comes up again. And this time, Ray is really talking about, ‘Yeah, I can beat Marvin because I can do this and he’s doing that.’ And everybody’s like, ‘Yeah, Ray. What’s the population of your world?’ … I never thought he would fight again. Especially not against Marvin.”
Leonard said the conversations in the bathroom and on the plane were actually continuations of one that began at ringside.
“I was sitting there with Michael,” Leonard told me for the oral history. “I’m watching the fight, and I’m watching Hagler get outboxed by a guy who is known as a slugger, a puncher, John ‘The Beast’ Mugabi. I said, ‘Michael, I can beat Hagler.’ He said, ‘Yeah, Ray. Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ Everyone thought I was just being a smart-ass. But I really saw a sign. I mean, I always felt, being a boxer, I could outbox him. And if Mugabi can do that, I can do an even better job. And that had the most bearing on my decision to go ahead with a Hagler fight. I felt he was at a point that he didn’t have that same fire in his body or in his heart. He wasn’t the same guy.”
Leonard was not alone in making that assessment of Hagler.
Stephen Wainwright, Hagler’s former attorney, told me, “That’s the first time I ever saw Marvin suffer a beating, was in the Mugabi fight. Granted, Mugabi suffered a much worse beating, but nevertheless, Hagler suffered a beating.”
Two-time Hagler opponent Vito Antuofermo noted, “At his best, Marvin wouldn’t let Mugabi hang around that long; he wouldn’t get hit that much.”
It tells you how highly regarded Hagler was that he’d taken on an unbeaten and dangerous opponent, won probably eight rounds out of 11 and scored a legit 10-count knockout, and still people perceived him as slowing down.
Hagler did say to Bernstein in his post-fight interview that the fight “might have been my last,” and he even asked Bernstein, “Aren’t you going to miss me?”
Top Rank matchmaker Bruce Trampler said for the oral history, “After the Mugabi fight, it was pretty evident that Marvin didn’t want to fight anymore. He couldn’t quite formulate a response to the writers after the Mugabi fight. They were saying, ‘Are you going to retire? You going to fight?’ And he just couldn’t answer them. And I think we all knew what the answer was.”
Hagler, reflecting in 2011, said, “I could have retired after Mugabi. But there was one more guy out there that I wanted to fight.”
And that one more guy out there wanted to fight him, because he’d seen just enough vulnerability against Mugabi to believe he could win.
Forty years ago, Ray Leonard watched an all-time great middleweight champ prevail in a stirring slugfest, and the chinks in the armor he picked up on inspired him to throw a crazy idea at his celebrity friends.
Well, if Leonard was crazy, he soon proved it was a crazy-like-a-fox situation. Which is a world away from being perceived as crazy by a Fox.
Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with nearly 30 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.
