It wasn’t the COVID-19 vaccine that put boxing great “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler down for the count. That’s the word from his wife, Kay Hagler, who knocked out the “stupid” rumor Monday.
“After 31 years the love of my life is gone and my life without him no longer makes sense, but I can feel him next to me even now and he’s telling me not to give up and be strong for him,” she wrote on Facebook.
The former undisputed middleweight champ died Saturday at the age of 66. His cause of death has not been reported, but his widow says she knows what it was not.
“I was the only person close to him until the last minute, and I am the only person that know how things went,” she wrote. “Not even his family know(s) all the details and I do NOT accept to read some stupid comment without knowing really what happen. For sure wasn’t the vaccine that caused his death.”
Among those pushing the rumor that the Newark, N.J.-born pugilist was boxer Thomas “Hitman” Hearns, with whom Hagler famously traded haymakers for three rounds in 1985 before closing the show with a devastating barrage of punches that left Hearns on the mat.
Hearns had posted on social media that his former rival had been in the ICU fighting for his life after having a bad reaction to a COVID-19 shot. Hagler’s widow calls such claims “nonsense.”
“My baby left in peace with his (usual) smile and now is not the time to talk nonsense,” she added in her posting.
Just as he did in the Hearns fight, Hagler will go out on his own terms, his grieving widow said.
“Marvin hated funerals and therefore there will be no funerals or church celebrations‚” she added, asking fans to remember him with a smile and light a candle in his memory. Apparently, Hagler fans will still have one more memory to treasure and it’s in the making.
“However there is something special that I will do because it was his wishes and you will be informed at the right time by me,” she wrote. “I just need time.”
Similar anti-vaccination rumors made the rounds in January when baseball great Hank Aaron died shortly after being inoculated for COVID-19. A medical examiner confirmed that Aaron, 86, died from natural causes.
Molecular biologist and Baylor College of Medicine dean Peter Hotez told NBC that he worried anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists — whom he blames for targeting African Americans — were exploiting Aaron’s death to promote disinformation.
