Is Roberto Duran the best Lightweight of all time?

Of all the lightweights I've seen fight live, Duran's #1 for me.

 

So my choices are to to re ask the question "Was he the best LW ever?" or to agree "He was not the best LW of al time?"
The answer to the question is no he's not.

 

I think Roberto Duran takes the number #1 position as the best Lightweight in the world by a very close vote with fighters like:

Pernell "Sweet Pea" Whitaker
Alexis Arguello

 

Allow me to repeat myself please. I think Roberto Duran ranks as the number #1 Lightweight in the world pfp in history by a very close vote, with fighters such as:

Pernell "Sweet Pea" Whittaker
Alexis Arguello
Ike Williams
"Hammerin Hank"

Henry Armstrong
Lou Ambers
Tony Canzeneri
Julio Ceasar Chavez Sr.

All a neck breathing distance behind him in no particular order.

I honestly think Whittaker most definitely takes two out of three against "Cholo/Hands of Stone" if not all three in a best of three fight series. "Sweet Pea's" crazy athletic southpaw style would've given Duran the same type of fits at 135 that it gave Chavez Sr at 147.

 

Duran would have knocked all the teeth out of Whitaker's head and ****ed him in the mouth.

 

Duran is the greatest lightweight of the past 88 years.

He was not the greatest lightweight who ever lived. Because of someone whom the press called "The Great Bennah" or "The Ghetto Wizard."

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Haha! Say it ain't so Stonehands...nah, it's still Cholo!

 

My intellect must overrule my heart, lest I be a woman.

Benny Leonard is the greatest lightweight who ever lived. Duran never faced anything like Lew Tendler in that division. We can start there.

But take solace -Duran is and must be greater than Leonard (#5; #8)

 

We have seen Roberto Duran numerous times fight, so we are greatly impressed by what we have seen... A great natural fighter for sure who beat lightweights nowhere on the level of Benny Leonard who ruled the greatest array of lightweight contenders for almost seven years such as Lew Tendler, Johnny Kilbane,Willie Ritchie, Freddie Welsh, Charlie White, Rocky Kansas, Joe Welling, Ever Hammer, Jack Britton, Johnnie Dundee, Joe Welling etc. He was to boxing that the welterweight Ray Robinson was 30 years later...
Leonard was "King of the Lightweights" for 7 years...I cannot blame Duran for not having lightweight contenders of the same calibre as Leonard did, but I pick Benny Leonard
as he beat the best ,could box and hit and was the greatest "thinker " in boxing...

 

In a 30-rounder?