Is Leonard Vs Duran I one of the best fights ever, or atleast your top 5?

Mag1965 is a Leonard fan all the way but doesnt want to come out and say it

 

yes I am a Leonard fan because of how great he was. The man beat them all, and still retired with only 40 fights.
But to be honest, I am really a 100 percent Thomas Hearns fan. Nobody compares to how much I admire Hearns and his perseverance. As for Ray? Leonard was great and beat all the legends, but his actions after the Marvin Hagler fight and handpicking was a little dirty, as well as the fact that he was dirty in the ring with holding and hitting or hitting on the break. He started to believe he was bigger than boxing. Lalonde and the 168 pound limit fighting for 2 titles was an insult on boxing. When he knocked Lalonde down the first time in round 9, the punch which knocked down Lalonde was on the break, all the other punches missed. With Hearns in June of 1989 he tried hitting on the break, but Tommy was too experienced to get caught with something big to knock him out. But to answer this. Yes, Leonard fan. I cannot deny his greatness.

 

You still say Leonard wasn't at his peak because he fought durans fight even though at the start of this thread there was an article posted that quotes Leonard and Dundee saying that they did fight there fight. And when they realised it wasn't working tried to make adjustments but duran made it impossible.

 

Having not seen every fight it's hard to say but I will say it is one of the best super fights in many years and lived up to it's hype ...

 

In response to the predominant, on-going discussion in this thread, I will say Leonard was far closer to his peak in the Brawl than Duran was for New Orleans. I also don't believe the first fight was particularly close; I had Leonard bagging only four rounds to Duran's eleven. This performance, in my opinion, eclipses that of Frazier's against Muhammad Ali, and is as close to an accurate reading we will get in comparing a naturally much smaller Duran to Ray Leonard.

 

no I do not think Ray was at his peak or at superfighter status. The first Duran fight made him a superfighter because he learned the mental as well as the physical game.

 

I agree with you that he learned from the loss, but do we all now agree that the loss wasn't a result of him fighting durans fight? He fought his fight and just wasn't good enough on the night.

 

Had Leonard fought the first fight in the style he fought the second fight, Duran could not have beaten him. Do I think Duran would have quit the first fight in the manner he did the second? I am not sure, but he would have lost and rather easily.

 

That wasn't the question, in the second fight he had the benefit of hindsight. He'd taken the beating in the first fight and learned from it. But that doesn't change the fact that the fight he fought was his own and not something duran tricked him into.

 

Which is what I have been saying all along. Ray was inexperienced to a guy like Duran as far as mental aspect, who was at the level of elite fighter. It doesn't matter if a guy is physically great if he cannot match that mentally. After Duran he matched the physical and the mental. That is a superfighter. That is why I said Ray learned from it and got better once he had this experience. And he became this superfighter which he was not for the first Duran fight.

Ray actually took this mental aspect too far after Hagler, since by that time his skills had diminished, so he used the mental aspect more than the physical. It worked for his fight with Hagler, and he did get the fight with Lalonde at 168 even though Lalonde was not fighting at 168 and shouldn't be fighting there. The fight with Hearns in the rematch, to get Tommy to 164 was Ray's way to get an advantage, but he underestimated how low Tommy could go. Tommy came in at 162 1/2

 

Ok but in other threads and earlier in this one you have said that in there first fight ray fought durans fight which I think it's safe to say has been proved incorrect? I agree with you that ray learned from the defeat (as all great fighters do) but again this is not proof that he fought any ones fight but his own.

 

yes, I have always said Ray fought Duran's fight. Ray wanted to beat Duran at his own game as he said. As he said after "I almost beat him. I almost beat Duran at his own game. So in the rematch I was going to fight my fight". As a matter of fact, the comments someone said recently about Dundee or Leonard thinking they were the bigger fighter and would beat Duran that way makes sense. That would prove Ray fought the wrong fight and thought he would stop Duran, who was not a small fighter at 147.

 

Which isn't any different to you and your fandom of Hagler. The only worth you see in the likes of Terry Norris and Hector Camacho is that they gave Leonard the pasting that your idol never came close to dishing out.

 

anybody else thought Leonard won this fight? I thought Leonard won by 1 point or something like that.
I remember I either scored it a draw or for Leonard by a point.