I remember hearing an interview with Hamed last year where he said that the real reason he retired was because he had so many problems with his hands.
"pounding" You Hamed haters are ridiculous. He lost a decision, Barrera was the better man that night but Hamed was absolute world class with the potential to be one of the best ever IMO. Yeah, a kind of shame he retired so early, yeah he may have been somewhat discouraged and yeah he was arrogant to the max (which I believe was his main flaw in the end - you can't learn from defeat if you have 0 humility), but you so called fans/keybord warriors saying this stuff about such a magnificent talent are probably much more arrogant that he ever was.
This is what actually made me think that Barrera destroyed Hamed before I watched the fight. Sayings like yours. When I watched the fight, I kept waiting for that one KD or that one lethal right hand, never happened. Barrera won, fair and square, but it was far from a pounding. He fought a tactical fight and won. There was nothing close a war in that fight.
Hagler would have started taking beatings. He had a pretty tough fight with Mugabi, tougher than he should have and then looked like he had a hard time finding the openings against Leonard as well. Leonard had fought once in 5 years when he beat Hagler. MW started to get a little deeper as Hagler was ending his reign, he would have become a stepping stone.