Comeback Thomas Hearns (spoiler)

[Makijs]

Rusty Hearns wins comeback fight

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/boxing/4732149.stm
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41361000/jpg/_41361115_hearns203.jpg
Thomas Hearns made a winning return to the ring after five years of retirement by stopping John Long in Detroit.
Fighting at cruiserweight in front of his home fans, "Hit Man" Hearns, 46, showed trademark punching power when he sent Long to the canvas in round six.

But the former world champion at five weights was also hurt himself before celebrating the win when his opponent failed to come out for round nine. "This is just the start, I plan to keep fighting a long time," said Hearns. The American, who had lost his previous bout to Uriah Grant in 2000, admitted he would need three or four bouts to tune up for another world title tilt - probably at light heavyweight.

Hearns now has a record of 60 wins and five losses with one draw and 47 knockouts.

[Makijs]

http://www.fightnews.com/fightnews_2/headlines//EEkkZlZpEAXwdrqFLZ.html
Hearns wins comeback bout!

Sunday, July 31 2005

By Andre Courtemanche at ringside

After a five-year layoff, 46-year-old ring legend Thomas "Hitman" Hearns, 60-5-1 (47), returned to the ring and engaged in a much-too-tough comeback bout versus limited journeyman John Long, 19-7-1 (10,), Saturday night at Cobo Arena in Detroit. Hearns was staggered in the first and absorbed an alarming number of solid shots, however, his still world-class power eventually took over. He dropped Long once in the sixth round and made him quit for good after the eighth. Hearns has lost much of his vaunted handspeed and seemed to have trouble pulling the trigger, especially early, but still had enough to overcome the crude attacks of his opponent. After the fight, Hearns told the crowd "This is just the start, I plan to keep fighting a long time."

[Emilio]

respect! :D

[Gulo gulo]

46 jaar en vijf jaar afwezig geweest, de meeste come-backs lopen slechter af. Klasse prestatie :thumbs:

[Octavius]

Zeker respect maar of het zo gezond is. Big George deed het ook zeker goed met zijn comebacks.

[Octavius]

Zeker respect maar of het zo gezond is. Big George deed het ook zeker goed met zijn comebacks.

[Makijs]

http://www.maxboxing.com/Woods/Woods080305.asp
Telling Hearns to Quit? Mind Your Own Damn Business
By Michael J. Woods (August 3, 2005)

http://www.maxboxing.com/Media/tommyhearns.jpg
Tough business, this boxing.

Me, I'm of the belief that my best professional days are "TK." That's journalism shorthand for "to come." Christ, I hope so. I mean, I do make more annually than my age, but living in NYC, it's best to double and triple your age in salary. Otherwise, you'll not be joining in George W. Bush's "ownership society," unless you count "owning" enormous credit card bills as part of Dubya's grand vision.

I'm 35 3/4, and in a business where I'm reliant on my brain, not my body. Thankfully, because with this forestry I got growing on my back, I wouldn't make the cut for Chippendales. I just keep chipping away professionally, carving out 20 minutes here to pitch agents on a book project I've been honing, nabbing 45 minutes there to finish a draft of a screenplay I'm assembling. So my professional window, I'm pretty certain, remains wide open.

Last week, I watched Jay Leno, 55, shoot the breeze with Bill Maher on Leno's show, and admitted with admirable frankness that in his estimation, he had peaked as a professional. Maher, the quintessential ballbuster who's still looking for his first Emmy at age 49, said he thinks his best days aren't in the rear view mirror. It got me contemplating the "comeback" of the fighter we used to call the Hitman, Thomas Hearns, whose best days, we can unanimously agree, are behind him. Decades behind him.

Our mental movie of Hearns in his heyday harkens to a different era, the 80s. The most enduring catch phrase from that decade, "Just Say No," could serve as the three most appropriate words some of his family, friends and pundits would offer Hearns, 46, when consulted with his plan to spit in the face of Father Time, and make one last run in a sport that is the most cruel when it comes to telling a past-their-prime athlete that it's time to throw in the towel. If you're a baseball fan of a certain age, maybe you have memories of Willie Mays stumbling like a beer-league softballer with the Mets in 1973, or ballboys wiping pigeon crap off Hank Aaron's shoulders in Milwaukee in 1976. Their batting averages were sub-anemic, sure, and on a daily basis, their groins and hamstrings tried to send memos of dissent, the message being, C'mon, we're tired, you're tired, let's call it a day. In boxing, a stubborn soul can ignore those balky muscles, silence the cranky components of their body with an extra thick layer of Ben Gay, and continue a quixotic quest to stave off the inevitable.

The motivators for relative geriatrics to make one last stand are, in order: 1) ego, 2) boredom and 3) money.

I can't effectively measure Hearns' ego. For anyone who has functioned at a Hall of Fame level of competency for so long, as he did, I'm quite certain his ego is at a typical level of enormity. "Egotism is the source and summary of all faults and miseries," said the writer Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish-born essayist/social critic. That same innate belief in himself that lifted him up to be one of the 80s top ten fighters apparently doesn't have an "off" switch. The ego continues to send him messages that we, who are on the outside looking in, who don't have to go hunting for an alternate path at the midway point in life, deride as ill-conceived at best, moronic and suicidal at worst. "You can do it, Tommy," his ego whispers as he lays his head down at night, hours after he watches his kid gather the acclaim, the cheers, the adulation that he used to soak up appreciatively. After he watches his kid Ronald, 26, do things he used to be able to do, not quite as well as he used to do them, while his trainer and manager, Emanuel Steward, looks on. HIS trainer and manager.

Since Hearns last fought, on April 8, 2000, before he was in a tougher-than-it-should've-been struggle with John Long in Detroit on Saturday night, he hasn't found a calling that fulfills him. It would've been hard to find something that pays as well as he earned back in the day, of course. He dabbled in promotion, but the headaches you get there, trying to figure out how not to lose that nice silk shirt you earned back in the day, don't compare with the headaches you get from fighting. It's more fun getting the check handed to you at the end of the night, Hearns discovered, than writing all the checks. So what was he going to do? Not to be flip, but with his compromised diction and enunciation, TV commentary is out of the question. Man can only golf so many rounds and if school was never your thing, it's no more appealing at age 46 than it used to be. So boredom has to figure in to the Hearns reappearance on the scene. It was said that the cure for boredom is curiosity, and that could apply here. Hearns is curious whether he can pull of a Foremanesque feat, and will his body and mind to another run at the top. Factor in that level of ego we just referred to, and you have a dangerous combination at work. Because to satisfy his curiosity, Hearns will inevitably have to choose higher level competition than John Long next time, and no matter what his MRIs say, we all know that his is a brain that probably shouldn't take any more punishment.

As for money, I have no insight on how well Hearns put aside his dough from his marquee days. Hearns has said it isn't about the pursuit of the filthy lucre, so I'll take him at his word here.

Just because my most rewarding vocational years are ahead of me, I'm not so narrow minded that I can't peer ahead to 2030, when I've climbed whatever professional Everest I'm going to climb. And then, I will not take kindly to someone who has never even put on climbing spikes telling me that I should hang 'em up.

It's not for me to say that Thomas Hearns shouldn't fight again, that he should be content to savor the memories of the wins over Cuevas and Benitez, the thrilling contests with Hagler and Leonard. Do I find it ludicrous that he says, "I'm planning to fight a long time?" Yes I do. But I'm still a young guy (OK, not that young, I can hear Owen Wilson say in Wedding Crashers) and I haven't had to lay my restless head onto my pillow at night and contemplate just what the hell it is I'm supposed to do with myself for the next 35 years, as Hearns has had to.

Hit Man, I cannot and will not campaign for you to hang the gloves up for good. Each to his own, I say. Truthfully, for your own health and for the good of the sport that doesn't need any more slurry ex champs, I'm sort of hoping, deep down, that your groin or your hamstring sends you a memo, like your ankle did during your 2000 comeback against Uriah Grant. The memo's content? Hit Man, the golf course beckons. But for those crusading for you to drift politely out of the frame, I say: Let ye without a gray hair mind your own damn business.