Four Kings: Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, Duran and the Last Great Era of Boxing - Hardcover

Kimball, George

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1590131622 ISBN 13: 9781590131626

Publisher: McBooks Press, 2008

Synopsis

Their names are legendary: Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hit Man Hearns, and Roberto Duran. They were exceptional boxers with unique combinations of power and speed. In another era, with few rivals of equal caliber, each might have held championship belts for years on end. But as it was, they matured together in the 1980s and fought each other as middleweights. With unforgettable courage and skill, they ruled the ring and ushered in the last Golden Age of boxing.

George Kimball takes an authoritative look at the rivalries that fueled this great era in sports history. Veteran sports journalist Kimball reported on every one of the Four Kings’ nine internecine fights. Here his eye-witness coverage is enhanced by recent interviews with each of the boxers and other seasoned analysts. The result is a fast-paced, blow-by-blow account of four extraordinary adversaries and a remarkable boxing epoch.

About this title

About the Author

George Kimball spent a quarter-century as a sports columnist for the Boston Herald. In 1985 he was awarded the Nat Fleischer Award for Excellence in Boxing Journalism from the Boxing Writers Association of America. He was an eyewitness to all nine of the bouts between the Four Kings and has covered nearly 400 world title fights in a four-decade sports writing career.

Reviews

*Starred Review* Consider the state of boxing today. Not easy, is it? It’s hard to name a prominent fighter. The audience that once gravitated to the sweet science has been diffused among an alphabet soup of competing organizations presenting overhyped, pay-per-view events. It wasn’t always so. Roberto Duran, Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler, and Thomas “Hit Man” Hearns were all household names in the 1980s, held multiple titles in or around the middleweight division, and fought among themselves nine times. Kimball, a columnist for the Boston Herald for 25 years, covered all nine of those epic confrontations among 400 other title bouts. He relies on his notes and recollections of the fights as well as fresh interviews with the fighters, their handlers, their managers, and others of note. His accounts of the fights are riveting blow-by-blows, the “big event” context is palpably rendered, and each of the fighters re-emerges from the mists of memory as colorful and compelling as ever. Boxing fans with a little gray in their hair—paraphrasing Pete Hamill’s foreword—will savor Kimball’s work. Younger fans? If they find their way to the book, maybe they’ll understand the difference between greatness and hype. --Wes Lukowsky

Edition details

• Publisher: McBooks Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1590131622
• ISBN 13: 9781590131626
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352