For sure he sounds pretty bad.
It’s sad seeing all these combat sport guys we grew up watching go through this. Hopefully some of the rule changes that happened in boxing maybe late 80s/ early 90s can’t remember, but I really hope it helps the guys that got into the sport in the 90s and beyond. Hearns took and gave some incredible beatings in his day.
Fingers crossed the hitman can live out his days with at worst full cognitive abilities. Slurred speech is just something I expect from all of them at this point.
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Sorry to hear it. A fixture of my childhood and a legend in my household.
My best memories of childhood are watching boxing with my dad and old Hearns fights were always special.
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Not to toot my own horn, but I was pretty fearless when it came to taking fights & sparring gigs, but there were a couple of guys who I was thankful that I never got called to work with, Tommy Hearns & Julian Jackson. I had a rock for a head, but I was afraid they’d be able to smash it.
I did meet Hearns on a couple of occasions though & he was an extremely nice guy. He didn’t act like a big star at all. He was the type of guy who would come across the room to greet you if he recognized you rather than wait for you to come to him.
This pic was taken at the Boxer of the Decade Awards show at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City in 1990.
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As for his current diminished state, it’s awful to see, but I pretty much knew it was coming. He was in a lot of extremely tough fights & at Kronk, Manny Steward ( RIP ) believed that hard sparring prepared his fighters for hard fights. So, Tommy was in countless wars in the gym against some of the best fighters in the world. So, he soaked up a lot of punishment.
Then, there’s also the whiplash effect that long, tall fighters with skinny necks get when they take a beating or are knocked out. It puts a lot of miles on a fighter’s engine. I’ve seen it many, many times.
I attribute my own durability to the fact that I had almost 17” neck when I first began boxing at 125 lbs & I worked on it a lot in training. In fact, I learned much of what I did from my friend, George Chuvalo who befriended me as a kid when I went up to Toronto & stopped one of his fighters who was 13-0 at the time. He was a big prospect at the time & George envisioned him becoming an Canadian Olympian for the 1984 games. So, I stood out to him & he liked me enough to teach me a lot of the tricks of the trade as far as strength & conditioning goes whenever he had me up there to fight or spar with his fighters.
And it all paid off because in 70 odd amateur & pro fights, I was never dropped or knocked out. I was stopped on cuts a couple of times & had one waved off by the ref because of the punishment I was taking & on another occasion the doctor stopped the fight between rounds because my nose was broken & it wouldn’t stop bleeding.
So, I was a durable guy & that enabled me to take a lot of abuse, but somehow, someway I’m unscathed other than some scars & a reconstructed cervical spine. Why I have my wits about me & why my speech isn’t slurred, I can’t say. My neurologist attributes it to my thick skull. Lol.
But back to Hearns, hopefully he’s being well cared for & he enjoys the rest of his days in comfort.
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Who would have thought that standing in a ring pounding on each others heads with big gloves on for 12 rounds would cause brain damage?
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A true warrior who never coasted with his god given talents but went to war with his opponents.