Hagler vs Leonard - Who had the advantage?

Fine Sal how are u? I sometimes get busy thru out the day

Thanks for the welcome back

 

This is a very strange thing to say about someone who's only had one fight in five years and never fought at MW before. How much can you really know about where you're truly at in such circumstances?

Leonard knew so much about himself at that point that he went with the strategy of staying in the pocket with Hagler up until just a couple of days before the fight. Nearly being KO'd in sparring convinced him it wasn't a good idea to slug it out with Marvin after all.

 

Nothing to add to this. Nor should anyone else have really.

Spot on.

 

What's strange about it? If I say 99%, or 95%, would that make you happier? The number is a figure of speech. What I'm saying is that I believe Leonard had an extremely strong degree of confidence in his body being no less than up to the task of coping with the slowing version of Hagler, despite the layoff or never having fought at middle. He was an incredibly confident man and prudent/shrewd with it: his career never really indicated otherwise imo, perhaps other than the Norris and Camacho fiascos. Do you think he had less than near 100% confidence in his own abilities? I don't and wouldn't want him not to have. The getting rocked in sparring making him want to box Hagler - which was the obvious way to trouble even the best version of Marv anyway - doesn't make Ray weaker or any less confident in my book, it makes him smart. I get the impression it was what he intended to do from the start anyway (box/shoeshine, that is). If he had no idea of his own limitations then surely he'd have gone out and slugged anyway? From my experience, confident people who know their strengths get conked all the time in sparring; I don't think it's that big a thing.

 

He had confidence, yes, but he didn't really know. If you been out that long and fighting in a new weight class you can't know.

The strange thing is that you say he knew what his body could give him, when actually rather the opposite is true. Confidence is good - but it's belief, not knowledge. No matter what he believed, he lacked in actual knowledge.

 

Constructive knowledge vs. Actual knowledge. **** just got REAL.

 

The more I think about, the more impressive it is that Leonard could keep his cool when his legs went barely half-way through the fight. Things really got real when he got caught hard by Hagler in the 5th with his legs leaving him, but he stuck with it.

Showed so extremely much more maturity than the "deer caught in head-lights" stuff in Montreal. He showed real heart and guts in Montreal, but against Hagler he complemented that with a very cool head.

 

OK, it's strange if you say it's strange. I'll retract my ill-advised use of the word 'knew' and say that he had an intuitive and most likely very accurate idea of what his body could give him, on account of it being....well, his body, combined with a native self confidence bolstered by a clear risk/reward sense of how the fight was going to be perceived by both Hagler and the general public.

I was going to do a whole spiel about self belief coming from actual knowledge or potentially empirical evidence as well as paving the way to it, but on the proof thingy, I want you to prove that when Leonard got hurt in that sparring sesh, the offending punch caused reality to splinter and created a dimension parallel to this one where Leonard was really one of those lizard crocodillipig thingymibobs that David Icke says are controlling the world behind the scenes. And that the 11th doctor sealed the void between worlds when he ****ed all the Daleks off into it because they were covered in magnetic void stuff from all that time travel. You've got to admit, it makes for better conversation than being a pedantic *******.

 

I don't really get what you get "pedantic" from. An athlete that's been out for five years are largely in the dark about what his body will give him. It must be uncomparable to an active athlete. It's not a small difference, it's a very big one.

For example Ali was completely taken aback by how fast he tired against Quarry in his comeback. And that was Quarry, not Hagler. No amount of sparring can compare you for how it is to be in the ring with someone like Hagler when you'd had only one fight (with a much lesser opponent) in over five years.

Leonard didn't have any magic initution. What he did have was a fantastic ability to compensate his lack of knowledge with improvisation.

 

I'm gonna back this.

Layoffs eff with you in so many ways. I came back from one and had trouble turning my punches over! Slapped the **** out my opponent. One of my only decision wins, dunno that I hit him with an actual punch all night. I thought training for the bout went well, but when I got in there, my timing was ****, I was overeager, my balance was horrible, and I was so dull I could get knuckles on the guy, and he wasn't anything special.

 

What have I been saying all along mate?
Sweetest of all.:yep

I'm not going to try and top some of the superb posts here,but given the significance of this bout,rarely will you see such an anticipated match up where one fighter has the odds stacked against him as much as Ray did here.
If anyone wasn't around,it's hard to articulate just how fearsome Hagler was perceived as at the time.
This would be like Calzaghe or even Pavlik (if it was his first fight back)coming back and beating Ward.I'm not for a second comparing them ability wise but Hagler was dominant the same way Ward is now and it would be very hard to make a case for Calzaghe winning.The similarity comes in Ward being out on his own the way Marvin was having seen everyone off.
There was not much of a case for Ray winning,and even as a young fan I feared the worst.

 

Yep.

But I have to say the stars aligned for Leonard in this fight. He was as good as he possibly could be. His timing and reflexes looked sharper to me than they did in any other fight afterwards.

But to move up after an incativity like that to face a monster like Hagler... Completely unheard of.

 

This is a topic that I've argued so much about that I'm at the point where I'm not giving cases against it the time of day, as evidenced by my first post in the thread. That's what it is. It's astonishing the lengths of which people go to diminish that win, and really -- ALL of Leonard's wins. He was little more than a mediocre fighter according to the logic of some here. That's essentially what they're saying.

 

I agree totally. The stars aligned in every way possible. You got it exactly right. Ray should not have won that night. Hagler underrated Ray as we all did. Hagler's inactivity, ring wear, concessions in the ring all contributed. And the fact that Ray's style and commentary for HBO allowed him to see first hand how to box Hagler, and how not to (Hearns). I thought Hagler was going to win by 5th round knockout, and I remember seeing Ray arrive at Caesars like the fighters do a few days before the fight, and thinking Ray is going to be knocked out, but this is still exciting.

 

:good Nice read:yep