Marvelous Marvin Hagler was a well-balanced Brockton guy: He had chips on both shoulders.
That served him well in his chosen profession, prizefighting, because it drove him to excel and seek respect in the toughest sport of all.
Like the city where he became a champion, not being fully appreciated pushed him forward.
As he began to make a name for himself in the ring, some referred to him as being from Boston.
Marvin always corrected them.
“I’m from Brockton,” he would say, proudly. “City of Champions.”
Even that was a challenge for the Newark-born Marvin, who took up boxing after his family moved to Brockton when he was 13, because any fighter who came out of Brockton fought in the shadow of Rocky Marciano, who retired as the world’s undefeated heavyweight champion.
Marvin saw Rocky as an inspiration, not a burden. In Brockton, a working-class city that always had to fight its corner in the shadow of Boston, people loved him for it.
One of the few fringe benefits in my business is the occasional trip on the company’s dime, and I have Marvin to thank for the best junket ever when, in 1985, the Boston Herald sent me to Las Vegas to cover the middleweight championship fight between Marvin and Tommy Hearns.
The decision to send me was last-minute, and all the commercial flights were sold out. Rip Valenti, the promoter, squeezed me in on a chartered flight carrying a contingent of fans from Brockton.
That was perfect for my assignment, except it wasn’t, because the Herald had just printed a story suggesting that Bertha, Marvin’s then-wife, wanted Marvin to retire, an unwelcome distraction for the Hagler camp.
When I boarded the flight at Logan, I spied the aforementioned Mrs. Hagler sitting at the front, reading a magazine.
Naturally, I did what any opportunistic journalist would do in the circumstance: I threw my colleagues under the bus, insisting I had no part in that sensational, deliberately provocative story.
Bertha listened to my pitch with inscrutable equanimity.
Then she stood up, turned, and hushed what had been a party on the plane. She told everybody I was from the Herald, and that nobody should talk to me.
Crestfallen, my crest fell even further when I glanced at my ticket and realized my seat was 40 rows back. It was a long walk.
Vegas made up for it. Richie Thompson, the Herald’s boxing writer, generously introduced me to the boxing crowd and many of my idols. Jake LaMotta, like Marvin a fierce middleweight champ, invited me to his wedding, which sounds impressive until you realize it was the sixth of Jake’s seven marriages, so in sentimental terms it was like being invited to a barbecue.
But the real gift was sitting ringside, with the Herald’s irrepressible George Kimball, watching Marvin and Tommy Hearns engage in three rounds of the greatest punching match ever.
If some people in the boxing world didn’t fully appreciate and respect Marvin before he won that fight that night, they did after.
Two years later, in the more modest surroundings of Anthony’s, a function hall in Malden, I watched Marvin’s final bout, against Sugar Ray Leonard, with a group of my boyhood friends. The closed-circuit broadcast came with the catered Italian food we always had at Anthony’s after someone’s funeral, and it felt like a funeral when the judges handed a split decision to Leonard.
In Malden, a blue-collar city not unlike Brockton, the consensus was Marvin was robbed. Sugar Ray won the decision because he was flashier. But Marvin won that fight.
Marvin knew that, too, and wore that knowledge like a burden the rest of his life, right alongside those chips on his shoulders.
Marvin died the other day at his home in New Hampshire. He was 66 and will be remembered as a champion, and a proud son of Brockton.
I’d like to think that somewhere, in a realm different than this, Marvin and Rocky, just a couple of Brockton guys, are having a nice, long chat.
Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at kevin.cullen@globe.com.
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