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February 24, 2019

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Home » Sunday » People

Boxing legend is a fighter, not a lover

By Pirate Irwin | 00:05 UTC+8 February 24, 2019 | Print Edition

AMERICAN boxing legend Marvelous Marvin Hagler may be 64 but he said that age won’t stop him hunting down more roles in action adventure movies — on condition he doesn’t do love scenes. The undisputed middleweight world champion from 1980-87 has made four films in Italy where he lives with his second wife Kay.

His most recent silver screen appearances were in 1997 in movies Notti di Paura and Virtual Weapon.

However, Hagler says while he enjoys commentating and carrying out charity work, the chance to lose himself playing someone else in movies has its attractions.

“Hopefully for me to land another film,” he said. “I love to do that.

“That is what I have been doing, action and adventure. You always get the girl in adventure films, but I cannot do any love scenes.”

Hagler, who retired from the ring after a controversial loss to bitter rival Sugar Ray Leonard in 1987, says he found himself as immersed in films as he had once been in boxing.

“It is not real. It is all fake, a fantasy,” said Hagler. “You can die and come back the next day, you know what that stuff cracks me up.

“It’s another game in the sense you can get lost and become another character. I got to live it same as I did it in boxing — walk it, talk it, live it, sleep it just try not to look like it afterwards!”

Hagler, who retired with a record of 62 wins, including 52 inside the distance, two draws and three defeats, shakes his head at the amount of titles that are on offer in his former sport today compared to his heyday.

“Now they have so much they throw them (titles) away like candy,” he said. “It was a long hard road in my day. I said you have to kill me to take it (the title).”

Hagler says there is one boxer representing the old days — Kazakhstan’s former unified middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin.

“I saw ‘Triple G’ (his nickname) and I told him I am glad that you became champion because it brings back respect into my division, you look like a champion who will be there for a while. Most champions these days, they come and they go, they confuse the public, who do not know who the real champion is. Right now they think Mike Tyson is the champion.”

Hagler, though, derives great pleasure in his work with disadvantaged youngsters in his role as an academy member of Laureus, a global movement that aims to use the power of sport to tackle social challenges in the world.

People


 

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