The world knew what it had almost as soon as it was over. Top Rank’s retrospective documentary “The Fabulous Four” was a must-have on VHS almost thirty years ago. In the last thirty years, the library of film and books about the 1980s welterweight and middleweight era has grown gradually. The gold standard for the bookshelf has largely been the late George Kimball’s “Four Kings.”

That tome now has a competitor. 

Published in September, longtime boxing writer Don Stradley gives his take on the era with an engrossing look at the most celebrated eight minute scrap in boxing history. “The War” is a story of the 1985 middleweight championship classic between Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns, the winding road it took to get there, and a joint biography of both men.

It starts from the stands.

Stradley makes a fun choice to open the book. Rather than open with an anecdote about what it might have been like at ringside on April 15, 1985, Stradley describes the scene at Boston Garden’s closed circuit viewing of the contest. This is a book centered around a single fight and the experience of Hagler fans in his native Massachusetts. The experience of seeing Hagler-Hearns, its electric ability to draw in anyone seeing it for the first time, is part of what makes the fight so special.

Later in the book, Stradley uses examples of classroom and professional sports environments that still use it as a tool of education and motivation. Lots of boxing books try to capture what certain special fights were like; their build, coverage, and aftermath. This is a unique read in its subtle through line about the visceral immersion a great fight can sustain long after its first airing. That through line juxtaposes well with several accounts from Caesar's by those who were there and declare that, for all the energy and violence on a television screen, it was all so much more to be there live.

Any look back at Hagler-Hearns has to bring with it the context of their era and there is plenty of stage setting allowing for generational co-stars Leonard and Roberto Duran to make their presence felt. The era is the unavoidable frame surrounding the fight. By focusing on a single event, there is depth of detail that enriches the story. 

The effort of Bob Arum to build the fight is a big part of the story. Hagler-Hearns almost happened in 1982 and its implosion is often broken down to a Hearns finger injury that might not have been to scuttle it. Stradley is able to look at more of what broke the fight down. From a distance, the Leonard era was built around four major stars who broke the bank but real time can be a different thing. 

Hagler-Hearns was a big fight in 1982 but it wasn’t going to be a superfight it became and had it occurred then might have ended up losing money. Despite a promise of big purses, “SelecTV, the Los Angeles-based pay-per-view company enlisted to help promote the bout, felt Hagler-Hearns was a hard sell...early estimates of what the bout might draw were far below Arum’s prediction.” It wasn’t just television distribution that was skeptical then, especially in a year where Larry Holmes-Gerry Cooney promised to dwarf all other boxing events. As recounted by Stradley, “Las Vegas was also unimpressed by the opportunity to host a Hagler-Hearns fight. Claiming Arum was seeking $2 million for rights to the live site, Caesars Palace...said the contest was only worth $750,000.” 

Nuggets like that are dotted throughout the book and are significant because part of the story is just how big Hagler-Hearns grew to be by 1985, a break the bank bonanza that came at a fulcrum point as one of the last closed circuit megaevents before pay-per-view settled as the new (and more convenient) norm. 

The life stories of Hagler and Hearns, and their relationships with their trainers, are built with chapters about each (chapters 2 and 3) before a sort of prelude to the showdown. Then it’s on to a colorful recounting of a multi-city press tour complete with psychological games between cities. For instance, “Hearns quickly found an amusing way to irritate Hagler. He argued, with some merit, that he was the bigger star and deserved the nicer jet.” Hagler was having none of it. Later, there were races between competing limos.

There is similar detail for the training camps and fight week festivities and, of course, a deep dive into the fight itself.

The book isn’t perfect. It gets some minor details wrong. An example comes in the aftermath of Hagler-Hearns and the story of how a rematch that never was became Hagler-Leonard instead. After Leonard’s win over Hagler, he is described as “tossing aside the middleweight belts that Hagler had cherished for so many years,” forgetting the fight was, in terms of sanctioning body belts, only for the WBC title. The WBA stripped Hagler before the fight and the IBF would not sanction it. The effect was the same. 

This isn’t a book about Leonard-Hagler and leaves it a small quibble. A larger one, and Kimball did this too, is found in the extended aftermath for both men. Several Hearns fights after Hagler, including title wins over Juan Roldan and Dennis Andries, and his losses to Iran Barkley, get mention. Missing is Hearns late career win over Virgil Hill, a late career gem that stands as one of the most impressive of his career. 

What’s not missing is the human element for both competitors, diving into some dark corners for Hagler including allegations of drug and domestic abuse and Hearns' estrangement and reconciliation with the late Emanuel Steward. Stradley isn’t writing a hagiography and the book is better for it. 

For those who were around when it was live, and those who have learned the legend in the almost four decades since they clashed, “The War” will be an engrossing read. “The War” can be found on Amazon or at www.hamilcarpubs.com.

Cliff Rold is the Managing Editor of BoxingScene, a founding member of the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board, a member of the International Boxing Research Organization, and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America.