Marvin Hagler vs Roberto Duran compared to Bernard Hopkins vs Oscar De La Hoya

If quoting the official scores of a fight makes me a fan boy, than so be it and whether you like it, I like it, or anyone else likes it, had Duran won or even split the last three rounds he would have won the fight. That's not speculation, that's a fact. Now would I have agreed with the decision had he won, I can't say for sure without watching the fight again. But the fact he faded in the last 3 rounds and told Gil Clancy that he just couldn't keep the pace up, is what it is.

I'm not really sure what your counter argument to that is. Most fighters in their 30's tend to retire, and if not retire, they lose the level of endurance they had when they were in their 20's.

Hell even Mayweather and Pac aren't the same fighters now they were when they were in their 20's. Imagine if either of them got into the ring with Hagler what the outcome would have been.

 

I think that might have been due to the fact that the Hopkins / Oscar fight was already a done deal. Sturm was considered a warm up, and it would have looked silly for the Hopkins fight if DLH had lost at his first attempt at 160.

 

There is always one.

So you know better than the official scorecards do you? Your opinion isn't worth squat. Duran was ahead on the cards going into the 13th. End of story.

 

Yeah, and Tyson was tied with Douglas before the KO. Good luck with that.

One should not forget that Duran's loss to Benitez was almost as close on the cards as his loss to Hagler. Had he won two more rounds on the judges' cards in that one he'd won the fight. You think we should defer to those cards as well?

 

Ok, I'll try it again:

No doubt was Duran past his prime and way above his best weight. THERE HAS NEVER BEEN AN ARGUMENT THERE.

But he wasn't in poor shape. If he'd for some reason decided to turn up in poor shape in his biggest fight since Montreal and his biggest challenge to that date, he'd never been able to hang with a prime ATG MW like Hagler through 15 competitive rds. Especiallly not with the ultra fit Hagler really turning it on late in the fight.

Duran turned in one of the great losing efforts of all times, but he wasn't close to winning on a fair card and he wasn't in poor shape. That's all.

 

I think the truth lies more in the middle between what you're saying. I would say on a fair scorecard he should have been behind going into the last 3 rounds, but I don't think it's accurate to say it wasn't close. And same thing with the issue of him being in shape. He wasn't in poor shape, but neither was he in the best shape of his life either. He was somewhere in the middle of those extremes.

Much of what happened later in his career was a case of a great bigger fighter beating a great smaller fighter, with of course Duran being the smaller fighter. I watched the Benitez fight yesterday and it was mentioned during the commentary that Benitez trained for that fight, like no other, (he only trained a week for the Leonard fight) due to bad blood and bragging rights between the PR and the Panamanian's. In any event it was clearly a case of a great light middle weight beating a good light middle weight.

 

Well, that's your opinion. Mine is that almost all of it is Duran fanboy BS and I've stated why.

 

To be honest, I don't see a huge discrepancy between what you're saying and what I'm saying. We both agree Duran lost, we both agree it was a pretty decent performance, I just happen to think it was closer than you portray it to be, but not as close as the judges portrayed it. As to the fighters Duran lost to, there's really no shame in losing to SRL, Benitez, Hearns, and Hagler. They are all great fighters, who were naturally bigger than Duran. That's basically undisputable.

 

I agree. Hagler won clearly, just not in a spectacular fashion.

 

Officially he was, but regardless what do you think the official score should have been?

 

We differ in whether or not Duran was in poor shape every time he lost, despite several of those fights being important fights.

Yes, in New Orleans Duran probably wasn't in top shape because of it coming shortly after his biggest single win, but in the other big fights he looked to be in top shape just as you'd expect a pro to be in his most important fights.

Then you keep bringing up that he was smaller and older time and time again, even though it hasn't been argued otherwise from me. I agree with you here, but won't give you the "out of shape"-card as well.

I didn't have Duran winning more than about four rounds against Hagler. I have no idea where the judges found all those rds for him. Neither in that fight or against Benitez.

Still think he put in a top notch performance against Hagler, all things considered.

 

I think Duran was definitely in close to the best shape he could get into at that stage against Benitez and Hagler.

They were just better than him at that stage.

No mas is the one where it could be debated and he does look a bit pudgy and obviously less sharp than the previous fight...but it could have been due to a mixture of simple overconfidence and Leonard fighting a largely very negative and very different fight.There's so much bull****, fanboyism and vested interest around that fight it's hard to get to the bottom of anything.

Post No-Mas i'd say it was more the smaller non-title fights he often looked out of shape in.Laing being the obvious one, but several others throughout the decade too. he was always like that and had several sluggish performances in non-title bouts against varying levels of comp throughout the 70s too.

 

Well again, he wasn't out of shape against Benitez, and against Hearns it wouldn't have mattered one way or the other. SRL he definitely was out of shape so now we're down to one fight.

As to that one fight, I was quoting what Gil Clancy had said based on an interview he had with Duran after the Hagler fight, which is that he gased out in the final rounds, that doesn't mean he wasn't in shape, just not in the same sharp he was when he fought at lw.

But the truth is, had Hagler showed up with his A game, he likely would have stopped Duran somewhere along the line.

Clancy's comments can easily be found by watching the Barkley fight, when it looked like Duran was running out of gas in the mid rounds of that fight too. But regardless, you're obviously going to believe what you want to believe.

 

I don't doubt those comments. But I find it completely natural that he would fade under Hagler's increasing pressure during the championship distance. Every other MW at the time would in all probability have folded, never mind faded. Like a younger and bigger Mugabi folded against an older Hagler.

That Duran, a 33-year old former LHW, didn't even look close to being stopped is fantastic and testimony to his skill, toughness and fitness.

 

That's a fair comment. I have huge huge respect for Hagler. In fact I became a boxing fan largely because of him, and the truth is that was not Hagler at this best that night.

I just finished reading an interesting article in which after the fight, Duran went up to Leonard and said, if you box him, you'll beat him and he said that comment along with Hagler's performance against Mugabi, sealed the deal for him to want to fight Hagler.

But I'm starting to think that Leonard isn't beyond saying thing to enhance their legacies so I don't know if that was true or not but here's the article.

http://ringtv.craveonline.com/news/172251-leonard-on-hagler