Is it Possible we Overrate Duran?

I have a career set that is fairly exhaustive and in my watching focus on the lightweight part. He certainly seems a special lightweight to me. I guess of lot of that discussion hinges on your estimation of guys like De Jesus, Marcel, Buchanan, Lampkin… et al. He certainly passes the eye test.

I fully understand the objections overrating some great late career performances while ignoring abysmal performances from the same time.

 

Yes he did. But when you move up various divisions from lw for example to ww and fight not only the best at the time, but arguably the 2nd best of all time, then move up to middle and try and accomplish what few ever have done, against yet another ATG. Yes you're going to fail along the way, but he also had a great deal of success and he deserves credit for even stepping into the ring against fighters such as Hagler and Hearns, where he gave up every advantage there is in boxing with the exception of experience.

 

yeah, it was 154 non-title bout.Laing was a career Welter, though i was always surprised he stayed at that weight actually, as he was huge there and famous for his bad training habits.

 

yeah exactly.You watch what he did at lightweight to judge how good he was at lightweight.

Needing some late career, higher-weight performances to give you the courage to say he was an all-timer there is weak to me.Those performances should be about how good he was at the weight they took place at, and his overall greatness and talent, but not used to retro-actively justify higher placing in a strict divisional ranking.


I mean surely nobody bumped up Vinnie Paz in their lightweight estimation\rankings when he beat a few ranked junior middleweights.

 

I think there's a lot of confusion between where he's rated as a lightweight and where he's rated as an ATG. He's usually ranked ranked 1st or 2nd at lw and anywhere from 4-10 ATG

 

Well according to some he's about the 5 best LW ever atsch

 

No. Duran's strategy was not to frustrate and survive. He expected Hagler to behave like Hagler -and come at him. Duran planned to counter the hell out of him and angle off. He was going to play the matador (which was the surprise he promised before the fight) because Hagler (who used to be called the "Toy Bull") was too much of a bull to out-bull.

Hagler's corner feared injury, so they had Hagler box him. Recall what Duran had just done to Moore's eye and that decision doesn't look so ridiculous. So what happens? Duran bangs Hagler's eye anyway, but late, and couldn't capitalize on it. Had Hagler fought aggressively, who's to say Duran wouldn't have closed the eye earlier and taken over?

Duran fought Hagler just off the perimeter and inside it, feinting, bobbing like a mongoose to invite shots to counter off of them, but he underestimated Hagler's physical strength and got worn down.

I had Hagler ahead after 10, 12, and 15, but you are underestimating Duran's performance in a big way. He was competitive; he was standing his ground with Hagler and employing a strategy that would be studied by Leonard and Dundee before Leonard fought Hagler.... outside the perimeter. When Hagler had safely slowed down. Over 12 rounds. In a large ring.

To give this performance the proper context in the historical sense, let's offer the name of any other fighter in the history of boxing who was a lightweight at 26 and who could have taken Hagler 15 rounds and made it competitive. ....Crickets.

 

Duran fought well within himself throughout the fight.At no point did he really try and step it up\hang it all out despite being outworked from early on.

He wanted to draw Hagler in, frustrate him by not engaging too much and counter.It seemed obvious to me he had an eye on not running out of gas\just going the distance throughout, rather than doing whatever it took to actually outpoint or stop Marvin.

None of this is meant as harsh criticism of his performance per se.More a counterpoint to the idea he fought an outright great fight-as opposed to a smart one considering what he had left at the time- and was actually close to winning, or in control at any point.He wasn't.

And more importantly, i don't feel the fight is relevant to rating him as a lightweight, regardless of what anyone feels other lightweights could do against Hagler.Most of the lightweight greats didn't bloat themselves through the weights like Roberto for one thing.

It should be seen as an impressive middleweight accomplishment that further highlighted the inherent prowess of Duran, and would come into play if you're rating him P4P or at 154\160 ie middleweight.I'd never argue against that.

 

The narrative that Leonard "chose to fight Duran's fight" in their first meeting is myopic and silly. If there is one thing I have learned following and sometimes even trying to compete in this sport over almost 4 decades, the better fighter usually makes the style that fight follows. That night in Montreal, Duran was simply the better fighter.

 

I agree.
It doesn't make sense to boost his lightweight rating based on what he did at higher weights anyway.
That method would only be valid in the case of a fighter achieving things in higher divisions while either still scaling inside or just over the lightweight limit or being at a condition that suggests they could comfortably do so.
And, as I've said before, Duran looked very much a 'natural' welterweight from 1979, and I believe he'd outgrown 135 and had been struggling for a while.

 

No doubt Duran was a great lightweight.
But there are so many great lightweights, to say he's outside the top 3 or top 5 is, in my view, no knock on him at all.
Alternatively, ranking him #1 in that division is not at all unreasonable either.
So many great lightweights.

 

True. Henry Armstrong won the lightweight title and did tons of work around that weight. Should he get extra credit for things he did above lightweight? It's an impossibly deep division.

 

:good

 

Duran was awesome as a Lightweight. When I think of Duran that`s the fighter I think of. He had the speed and he was non stop motion. He was still hungry in those days and hadn`t earned the huge paydays yet.

To me that will always be the real Duran regardless of what he did at the higher weights.

 

That's not a very well supported opinion.

In fact, arguing him as the best of the Fab 4 is vastly easier.