SPORT:Classic chronicle of the four fighters who held the boxing world in awe throughout the 1980s, writes Keith Duggan.
THROUGHOUT THE troubled 1980s, the quartet of Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler, Tommy Hearns and Roberto Duran staged a series of title fights that may well have represented a last, glorious stand for the sweet science. And, with a sense of timing that any of the protagonists would appreciate, George Kimball has written an account of their fascinating, interwoven rivalries that is part memoir and part tribute to the bravery, the absurd extravagance and the killer one-liners that defined the best of 20th-century boxing.
Kimball's career as a sportswriter with the Boston Herald coincided with the emergence of "Marvelous" Marvin Hagler (he had his name legally amended to include the superlative) from the shoe-cobbling town of Brockton. In addition to his other assignments, Kimball became the de-facto Hagler correspondent and, happily for him, was ringside for all nine of the fights that took place between the eponymous kings of the welter/middleweight divisions, at least two of which rank among the greatest fights of the 20th century. The Four Kings chronicles the rise of the four young men, from the wild and hugely entertaining Duran to the ultra-smooth Leonard and illuminates the wheeling and multi-million dollar dealing that facilitated their epic bouts in Las Vegas. As readers of his regular column in this newspaper are well aware, Kimball is both a great raconteur and a scrupulous facts-and-figures man, a combination that made his reputation as an absolutely authoritative and vivid boxing writer who belongs to the high tradition popularised by William Hazlitt. Here he is on the definitive seconds in the 1985 bout between the "Hit Man" Hearns and Hagler, regarded by all boxing aficionados as one of the greatest spectacles of modern boxing:
Hearns, dazed, went reeling across the ring in stutter steps, finally coming to a halt when he believed himself to be out of harm's way. As Hearns began to turn his head, the traces of one of those brief "Hey-I'm-not-hurt!" smirks had just begun to form on his lips when he realised that Hagler had chased him across the ring and was right on top of him. Hagler landed two crushing rights, punctuated by a left that missed mainly because Hearns had already begun to fall.
Bedlam reigned in the ring in the seconds after Hagler had won but it was to the fallen man that Kimball's interest was drawn and 20 years after, he recalled the poignant sight of Hearns being carried "like a baby " to his corner by one of his Detroit buddies, QB Hines. "QB was incongruously clad in a white dinner jacket, a red boutonniére in his lapel and the picture of the big man holding Tommy appeared in papers around the world."
Those fights had the cinematic combination of savage violence, tender exchanges and human bravura that made the four fighters hugely famous and extraordinarily wealthy and attracted all the celebrities of the period (Bob Hope, Lee Liberace, George C Scott, Bo Derek - how quickly they fade!) along with the press posse, of which Kimball was a ubiquitous member. Throughout, the boxing press forms a poker-playing, chain-smoking, bar-hopping Greek Chorus, filing reports and dispensing the kind of bon mots that have won Elmore Leonard high praise, many of which Kimball generously recounts here.
And underscoring the tone of this book is a salute to that tradition and lifestyle of sports reportage that has utterly disappeared.
As Pete Hamill notes in his introduction, "Kimball is a superb witness" to this rich chapter in boxing lore. For the most part, he is happy to lurk in the shadows of those fabulous nights but he occasionally pops up in highly comical or dramatic cameo moments, such as the evening when Hagler and, it seemed, anyone vaguely associated with him, were bombarded by (full) beer tins after Alan Minter lost to "Marvelous" at Wembley.
In a recent interview piece, the distinguished London Independent sportswriter James Lawton wrote, "Kimball, in his mid-sixties, is an apparently psychologically indestructible man who was under no great pressure to write a book, you sensed, because every time you saw him at a big fight or a golf tournament you could see he was still living his way through a boisterous life of undimmed optimism, still chuckling sardonically at the incongruities and pretensions of life and still drawing on a Lucky Strike cigarette. But then two things happened."
Those two things were retirement from the Herald and, almost simultaneously, the onset of grave illness.
That combination punch might have seen others hit the canvas but it prompted Kimball to shepherd his reams of notes and his photographic recall of those best of days into a flawless and singular account of fights that remain potent and important decades after the final bell.
The Four Kings will, unquestionably, be ranked as a classic boxing book that will take future generations back to those smoky, raucous ringside nights in Vegas.
...
Keith Duggan is an Irish Times journalist
The Four Kings, By George Kimball, Mainstream, 367pp. £10.99
