Marvin Hagler and Sugar Ray Seales: the unlikely Trilogy "I’m going to kill him. They can’t stop me. It was January 1979 and, wearing Army boots rather than athletic shoes, Marvin Hagler repeated this mantra over and over during his six-mile runs along the sand dunes of the Provincetown shore in the pre-dawn hours, enduring temperatures which were as bone-chilling as the self-affirming phrases he uttered into the frigid, early morning air. Sugar Ray Seales, a fellow southpaw and familiar foe from two prior ring wars in which each had been the first to blemish the other’s spotless record, was Hagler’s upcoming opponent, or next victim as Marvin preferred to think of him. Not that Hagler harbored any animosity toward Seales, the way he would another Sugar Ray. Nevertheless, he needed a primary target on which to focus his pent-up rage at being systematically denied a title shot after pounding his way to a record of 42-2-1 in five and a half years as a pro. "Look at all that money those Olympic kids got, look at all the money tennis players get," Hagler grumbled in a New York Times interview. "Leon Spinks got a title shot after seven fights. Some guys have fought for the title four times. This is my 45th fight and I still haven’t gotten one and I know all I’m going to get is one. They won’t give me another. Among a squad that included Davey Lee Armstrong, Jesse Valdez, Duane Bobick, and future three-time light-heavyweight world champion Marvin Johnson, Ray Seales was the only boxer representing the United States at the ill-fated 1972 summer games in Munich to win a gold medal, outpointing Bulgaria’s Angel Angelov in the finals. It was due to mismanagement in more or less equal measure to the Palestinian massacre which cast a sinister shadow over his achievement at the ‘72 Olympics that Seales didn’t get the keys to the kingdom that some believed, Marvin Hagler obviously being one, the 1976 gold medalists were handed almost as if by birthright.