The Tao of Hagler: High Socks and Switch Hitting

By the time that he got his hands on the world middleweight title in September 1980, Marvin Hagler had been boxing professionally for eleven years. Hagler hailed from Brockton, Massachusetts—home of the Blockbuster, Rocky Marciano—and like Marciano, Hagler’s promising amateur career never progressed to the Olympics. This was because, as Hagler would recount: “you can’t take a trophy and turn it into a bag of groceries.”

Turning professional in 1973, Hagler battled through his division at a torrid pace. He fought six times in 1976, six times in 1977, five times in 1978 and finally received a shot at the world middleweight title in November 1979. In a hard fought bout against Vito Antuofermo, Hagler was awarded a draw—enough to claim a moral victory and make for interesting pub trivia, but not enough to actually take the belt. The Sport of Boxing had decreed that Hagler was exactly as good as the champion of the world, but not good enough to be called the champion of the world. It was an affront that Hagler could not tolerate.

Marvin was always a brilliant finisher but it was at this point that he seemed to decide that nothing else would do. The only other blemishes on his record had been a draw against Olympic gold medalist Sugar Ray Seales, and a pair of decision losses against Bobby Watts and Willie “The Worm” Monroe a few weeks apart in 1976. Each man was subsequently knocked out by Hagler, in fact Monroe was stopped twice. When the record suggested a fighter had taken the best that Hagler could give, Hagler corrected it with a knockout. After settling his account with Watts in April 1980, and getting past the awkward Marcos Geraldo in May, Hagler was permitted to challenge the new champion, Alan Minter in London.

Hagler made quick work of Minter and (spare a small riot that broke out in Wembley) everything fell into line for Hagler after that. Though it had taken him eleven years to get there and he probably deserved it three years earlier, Hagler kept a vice grip on the WBA, WBC and later IBF middleweight belts until seven years later, managing an incredible twelve title defences. When discussing the all time greats of the middleweight division, for most boxing historians it is a case of choosing between Hagler and Carlos Monzon who dominated the first half of the seventies the way that Hagler reigned over the first part of the eighties.

Hagler’s style of fighting was something truly bespoke and to understand it you need to recognize that he was weird when he was switch hitting, but even weirder when he simply stood southpaw.

Hurting From Step One

When assessing the skills of Marvin Hagler, something that stands out starkly to even the most casual observer is the frequency with which he switches stances. Plenty of boxers had switched things up as a gimmick play, or used shifts to move into a “set piece” sort of combination, but for Hagler, whenever he was in one stance you had the sense that he was making the choice to not show the other half of his game. While no fighter is ever truly ambidextrous and he will have his favourite shots and habits from each stance, Hagler was one of the only fighters at the highest levels of boxing offering competence to a world class standard from either stance.

With that being said, Hagler’s base was the southpaw stance. When he wasn’t trying something cute, or he was taking a break, he reverted to southpaw. And it was from the southpaw stance that he gave so many of his opponents the most trouble. Hagler also maintained that his southpaw stance –combined with his being black and being good—were what led top fighters to avoid him for as long as possible during his climb towards the belt.

Even as a southpaw, Hagler brought weapons that most fighters didn’t have the tools to deal with. He is considered one of the greatest southpaw jabbers of all time and like Sergey Kovalev, his jab was as likely to be a flick as it was to be a power shot with his full weight behind it. Plenty of world class fighters with sturdy jaws were sent stumbling by the Hagler jab.

It is worth considering just how Hagler was so effective with his jab when so often the southpaw vs orthodox match up complicates both men’s jabbing. To steal Don Familton’s line, southpaw vs orthodox match ups often result in “crossed swords” as the fighters lead hands want to occupy the same line. A lot of orthodox fighters facing southpaws, and southpaws who spend their lives training against orthodox fighters, play into this by engaging in a hand fight. Go all the way back to the footage of Benny Leonard vs Lew Tendler and you will see the two men using their lead hands to fence and sneak through shorter jabs which were often parried.

The handfight does not always make for attractive matches where both men can do two-fisted hitting, and this Southpaw 101 strategy played heavily into the stigma around southpaws that Hagler referred to. Southpaws were more accepted by Hagler’s time and fewer coaches wanted them “drowned at birth”—in fact, Hagler won the title from a fellow southpaw in Alan Minter—but we live with many of these expectations today. Think of every time you have heard commentators refer to Manny Pacquiao’s jab being famously inaccurate as if that’s just part of being a southpaw, or the many southpaw vs orthodox match ups that have turned into patty cake and footsie like Wladimir Klitschko vs Sultan Ibragimov.

When studying Marvin Hagler’s jab and attempting to understand how he had so much success with it, one key factor that can slip under the radar is Hagler’s complete refusal to engage in the handfight. Then once you notice it, it is all you can see. He barely ever used his lead hand on his opponent’s. While he would occasionally pat away a jab instead of moving his head, Hagler’s lead hand is never in that half extended position in front of the shoulder or eye, where it serves as part check and partial attack. Instead Hagler’s right hand is coiled to his right pectoral.

Wilford Scypian didn’t last long against Hagler but makes for a fascinating study. Scypian was coached and cornered by Kenny Weldon, who coached Evander Holyfield and many others over the course of his life. Weldon also released a great deal of instructional material on boxing over the years and a common thread in all of them was handfighting with the southpaw. Throughout the Scypian – Hagler fight, Scypian tried to check Hagler’s lead hand, but realized he would have to reach so far for it that he would be opening himself up as much as a jab, while being too extended to perform any form of skipping stone jab off the hand fight.

Ultimately with Hagler giving him so little to work with in the handfight, Scypian was forced to carry his lead hand high and hope to swat down on Hagler’s jabs when he could read them. But with Hagler’s constant feinting—when he stepped into range he was always bobbling his head and shoulders, Scypian was lured into swatting at the air between himself and Hagler far too often and was thrown off by this.

Getting on the Counter

Of course, Hagler’s outright refusal to engage in the handfight also meant that his opponent's lead hand was free to strike at him. This just meant that Hagler had to move his head and use his distancing to dictate when the opponent could fire. When they did, Hagler would dip or slip and use the chance to get in underneath his opponent’s elbows and close to the inside.

You would have a hard time thinking of things that Hagler couldn’t do in the ring. Inside, outside, clean and polished, or rough and nasty, his game encompassed every part of the sweet science. But when you boil it down to the essentials, Marvin Hagler could probably have won a world title with his jab and counters off the opponent’s jab on their own.

In fact, one of the stiffest tests of Hagler’s middleweight title reign came against Roberto Duran. Duran was the old man of the Four Kings—having already fought an all time great lightweight career by the time Hagler, Hearns and Leonard made their professional debuts. Now two weight classes up from his starting point, Duran got sharper as he got older and rounder. As the opponents got bigger and became less inclined to lay down when he hit them, Duran began using the jab to draw responses and move in on the opponent’s body, where he could smother his opponent’s blows and infight like few others.

Both Hagler and Duran sought to close underneath their opponent’s jab, and their fight was a razor sharp duel. Each man looking to use their own jab or draw their opponents and get to the inside, where both were effective. The approaches were similar but Duran’s jab was an annoyance: if you threw back he ducked in and hit the body, or slipped to his right and pitched back that perfect counter right hand. If you didn’t react appropriately to the jab, he would start trying to sneak the right hand in behind it and plant you on your rump. In fact this is the reason that Duran was able to drop so many world class fighters with a simple 1-2. With that 1-2 Duran could hurt you as a follow up and a punishment for tightening up. The key difference was that Hagler’s jab itself was the hurting weapon—most fighters didn’t have the choice to shrug it off and sit on their hands.

Hiding the Stance Change

While his jab and counters off the opponent’s jab were core elements of Hagler’s game, the stance switches created another threat. Hagler used the switch of stance the same way that any fighter does: to create slightly different arcs on his punches and try to catch the opponent off guard. One of the secrets of successful switch hitting is try to switch stances—and thereby change the dynamic of the stance match up—without the opponent noticing.

Modern switch hitting is at its best when the stance switches are done in motion. Many fighters in MMA are in love with shifts, but the most successful and safest means of stance switching is to use a side step to get on the opposite stance. The side step takes a fighter off the opponent’s line of attack and forces the opponent to turn—giving him something to focus on instead of where your feet are. Hagler frequently made use of this, circling out of an exchange with his feet level, then coming back in on the other stance. Most often Hagler would do this by circling out of his usual southpaw stance, and then immediately entering with a leaping left hook from orthodox.

But the secret of Hagler’s switch hitting success that most modern fighters could learn from was the timing of the switches. When he wasn’t hiding his stance shift with lateral movement, Hagler was hiding them in the action of the fight. A great example of this would be out of clinches. Hagler would fight southpaw, wind up in the clinch, and then the referee would break Hagler and his opponent apart. As the referee stepped out from between both men, Hagler would be in his orthodox stance and the opponent wouldn’t clock it until they were already back in action.

Similarly, Hagler would fight a full round or two southpaw, then start the next round bouncing in his corner and establish his orthodox stance as the referee signalled to begin boxing.

Hagler used the infight to drive forwards and switch stances as if he were in a rugby scrum, but he would just as often allow his opponent to push in on him and “force” him to take a step back and change stances.

The one time Hagler switched stances right in front of an opponent was when he connected a big punch. As his opponent’s head was spinning and the crowd were cheering, Hagler would immediately get onto the opposite stance. There is always risk in switching stances right in front of an opponent, but by having the courage to just go for it when he scored a good blow, Hagler changed his stance and remained close enough to actually capitalise.

This brings us on to Hagler’s neatest stance switch, the triangle step. The last time we discussed this technique was after the first meeting between TJ Dillashaw and Renan Barao. In Japanese martial arts there is a mythical technique called sankaku-tobi or the triangle leap. This is where a combatant jumps out and around his opponent and ends up behind them. It has left its mark on fiction to the point that the swordsman teleporting behind his opponent is a commonly parodied trope of manga and anime.

Here is an example of the traditional form demonstrated by Japanese karateka, Masao Kagawa. You will see the same technique demonstrated by taijutsu or traditional Japanese jujutsu exponents. As you can see it’s a cool idea but there’s a bit of load up and the opponent inexplicably stands still as the jumper gets behind him and pulls him backwards. But with most legendary techniques—whether it be the triangle leap or the un-breakfall-able throw, yama-arashi , or the no-shadow kick—the story begins as an exaggeration of a real mechanic.

The triangle leap in a real context—which we here playfully call the triangle step to differentiate it from the nonsense one—is just an extreme example of cutting an angle and forcing the opponent to turn and face. Where the traditional triangle leap begins from a closed guard match up with both combatants in the same stance, the open guard, southpaw vs orthodox match up actually puts the fighter closer to his opponent’s back side from the get go. The most memorable example of this came in Roy Jones Jr. versus Richard Hall. Jones shot a right straight and stepped down the outside of the southpaw’s lead foot so deeply that he ended up behind him. Hall, in the moment, abandoned his stance and turned across himself to face Jones in a peculiar outcome where they had both changed stances. The important point, of course, is that no matter how unexpected his reaction, Hall couldn’t do much to stop Jones walloping him as he turned to face the champ.

Being a southpaw and a quality switch hitter set Hagler up well to use this triangle step, but his thudding southpaw jab and lead hook helped him even more. After being caught with a few powerful rights, Hagler’s opponents tended to duck down into their stance. This allowed Hagler to slide across their back and change stances into orthodox as he did so.

When he falls victim to an angle as severe as this, an exceptionally quick witted fighter will run for his life. He will step directly away from his opponent and turn to face his foe when there is a good amount of distance protecting him. But most good fighters are only quick witted from time to time, and as a fight progresses they revert to their training. Taking dominant angles is a business that punishes disciplined boxing because a disciplined fighter on autopilot is going to lock himself into a pivot around the lead leg eight times out of ten, teeing himself up to be whacked for free.

As his opponent pivoted around the lead leg to face him, Hagler would lift their head with a tight left hook and line up the right hand—his power hand—which was now loaded up behind him. Throughout Hagler’s career, the triangle step was at its most effective against the hard nosed brawlers who would duck in to meet him on the inside. Juan Roldan and Tony Sibson were the two who fell for it hook, line and sinker. But that was the talent of Marvin Hagler boiled down to its essence: he could meet a fighter where they were best, but there wasn’t another fighter alive who thrived in so many different types of fight.

Marvelous Marvin Hagler passed away on March 13th at the age of sixty six. If you are anything like this writer you might have done a double take after reading his age. Sixty six years old is still very much a tragedy—that is an old man for boxing but still a young man in so many of the other pursuits and experiences that make up a life. Yet the way that Hagler dominated middleweight boxing through the 1980s seems to warp my perception of time around him. For a while there Hagler was as certain as the sun rise. For years it seemed like anyone he faced—almost always declared by the sanctioning bodies to be the next logical and deserving challenger—was being set up in an embarrassing practical joke.

Hagler’s relationship with the boxing was an explosive sort of romance. He loved The Art of Boxing and mastered it as comprehensively as anyone who ever fought, yet it was The Sport of Boxing that so often let him down. A couple of judges on any given night, the lack of support for amateurs outside of an Olympic year, the way that he could never seem to gain the fawning admiration from the press that someone like Ray Leonard was awarded earlier and easier. And looking back it is almost absurd that a towering colossus of the boxing game like Hagler allowed these things to bother him as much as they did. Yet it was that distaste for everything in boxing outside of the ropes that led Hagler to hang up his gloves in 1988 and not look back. There was no uncomfortable falling apart for Hagler. He never lost to anyone who “wouldn’t have touched him five years ago.” Hagler was able to live a happy life in Italy with the love of his life—respected, wealthy and healthy while in the mind of the boxing fan he remains that lean, ferocious creature from 1987, captured in a glob of amber, frozen at the moment of the decision against Leonard and ready to pick it up again at a moments notice.

For more on switch hitting, check out Cyril Gane: Switch Hitting for the Larger Gentleman

For something a bit sillier, check out last week’s Film Room on Tag Team MMA