What do you personally make of the No Mas fight?

No but he certainly was a sad sight to see when he was fighting Holmes. Wouldn't brag about this at all.

Duran quit once in 120 fights and has all his faculties. Ali never quite, took way to much punishment of his own good, and has had health problems every since.

 

You are looking at Leonard's performance in a very shallow manner.

 

There's no getting around this:

In the first fight, Leonard took his beating and gamely fought on. When Duran taunted him in the 15th round and clowned him, he kept trying.

In the second fight, when the shoe was on the other foot, Duran quit.

If a guy clowns you, you do something about it. Or you keep plugging away until you can turn things your way.

Slice it any way you want, but to try to twist quitting into an act of machismo ... no.

 

BTW, I've been trying to research this but I haven't found anything from 1980 suggesting that Leonard's people rushed to make the fight or that Duran was especially out of shape. What are the supposed timelines for when Duran: a) got greviously out of shape after the first fight and then b) had to get back in shape/train for the fight? I saw one widely-syndicated article indicating that Duran was already training for the fight in early September. It's not adding up to me.

Also, were there any media reports between the fights indicating that Duran had ballooned up more than usual?

 

:good

 

20th june- 1st fight

24th june- first annual roberto duran day in panama (hard not to let that go to your head i'd think)

within 1 month- 'let's go back and fight him. Now, right away' leonard to mike trainer

july through august - duran partying in new york, claims to weigh 225 (seems unlikely to me, 185 was reported and seems a more reasonable figure)
'duran got up to 190' - plomo

mid to late august - 'I knew the history of duran and that's why i asked for a rematch so soon because i knew he was in celebratory mode. i caught him in the middle of that' - leonard
'I made that rematch in 3 months because he started drinking'...'I said if he will fight again he will lose to a second rate fighter' - eleta

early sept - rematch signed

oct 2 - duran in crowd at ali holmes. 'flabby, scaling at least middleweight' - h. mullan. (There's some other quotes from panamanian reporters, but ive only read them translated and the bn editor is probably a better source on duran anyway.)

in training- ' After montreal he wouldn't listen to brown, arcel or myself, he was on top of the world'
' his friends were bringing him food late at night. Ray Arcel came to me and said 'carlos, something is wrong, I am training roberto and he is not losing the weight, he's gaining weight' I find someone from panama....was taking food and beer to his room' - eleta

fight day - 'I think the problem was the hot cup of tea then the cold water, plus the shots i was given to lose weight'(diuretics).
'everybody in my dressing room, including eleta, all knew what was wrong.....I thought the doctor was going to give me a shot to make me strong but he didn't do anything ' - duran
'before the fight he complained about stomach pains to me, his stomach was stretching out' - plomo


I do think eleta was greedy in taking the fight when he thought duran would lose, but at the end of the day duran only has himself to blame.

 

Thanks. The weight figures I've seen on boxrec are much lower (and more plausible, imo, given his frame): "Carlos Eleta, Duran's long-time manager, said he weighed as much as 183 pounds before he started training for the rematch with Leonard. In New Orleans, before the fight, Luis Henriquez, Duran's interpreter, had put the top figure at 168½. And Freddie Brown, Duran's co-trainer, said he went into training camp in September at 173 and still weighed 160 as late as the first week of November."

(You would still have to be very undisciplined and undedicated to hit 183 as a non-retired welterweight though. 168/173 seems extreme but not unmanageable in two and a half months)

Where did you find the quotes? Were they made around the time of the fight or years later?

 

from the christian giudice book, it says they are all firsthand interviews so they are later quotes. the book was 1st published in '06 but doesn't give dates for the interviews.
except the oct 2nd quote, which is from then.

I take what duran said with scepticism, plomo and eleta would have had no huge reason to lie once duran wasn't making them money and there's no reason at all for leonard to taint his own victory

I'd say the absolute min for his max weight between the fights is 175, 185 seems high but is not crazy and 225 is not real

we know he had trouble making the weight, and we know he wasn't a big welter cutting down, so the only other option is that he was really not in good shape.

 

Well I read it in Duran's bio which contained a lot of quotes from Leonard himself, his manager as well ad Duran's manager. They are say the same thing.

Leonard said a couple of months after the fight he and his family went to Hawaii so he could contemplate about his future. He weighed his options, and decided to have a rematch. David Jacobs, one of Leonard's trainers was so against this that he quite over Leonard's decision. Ray knew that Duran was in New York parting and had gained 40-50lb and instructed his manager to make the fight. They offered Duran's manager $8M for the fight, and his manager basically said Duran's out of control, so if we don't take this maybe he ends up loosing to a nobody, so he accepted the terms. But by the time he started training for the fight, there was only about 8 weeks left so he had a hell of a time making weight and lost the weight too fast. The result is he entered the ring much weaker than he normally was. Now nobody is saying much of this isn't Duran's fault, it absolutely is, and he knew a rematch would be in the cards at some point, so this isn't to excuss Duran's loss but this is essentially what happened.

This is what wikipedia says about the fight.

"In the November rematch, Durán quit. He was not in good shape, which is why Leonard wanted a rematch"

Edit: I posted this without reading the posts above which better summarize what transpired and it's from the same book I was referring to.

One thing I've noticed, and I'm not sure why, but you seem to have a real hate on for Duran. In fact I've rarely come across someone who appears to disdain him as much as you do.

 

first of all the warriors code is a unwritten code so claiming somebody has broke it is sketchy

SRL did nothing wrong other than use his speed to keep making Duran miss while taunting him each time he missed.

 

How do they reconcile this story with the fact that Leonard's long-term trainer of 10-years quit because he opposed the decision to fight Duran again right away?

Sugar Ray is one of the athletes whose stories I never take all that seriously (he's like the uncle who tells cool and funny stories that you always have to take with a grain of salt). This seems like one of those stories that Leonard can tell in hindsight because it sounds cool and won't affect his legacy. Also, the story kind of makes him look smart and strategic too, so it's not like it's completely self-effacing.

 

Duran had a bully mentality

Leonard was humiliating him and he couldn't handle it.

So, like a bully, he quit and took his ball home.

 

I never said that SRL did anything wrong. Show me where I said that. There is absolutely zero doubt that 100% of the blame rests with Duran, some us are merely speculating why he might have done this because that's the purpose of this thread.

There's a movie coming out soon called hands of stone that might reveal a bit more of what transpired.

 

Once again you're in denial. So everyone basically has the same story, from Leonard, his manager, Duran's manager etc. and because you have some kind of warped agenda you just can't accept it at face value and no it doesn't make him sound cool, it makes him seem like a douche bag. In fact I'm very surprised he would even reveal something like this.

 

I don't hate Duran at all-- I just hate the rhetoric and excuses of some of his more irrational fans, like many of the people in this forum. He's one of the greatest fighters of all time and people here still feel the need and find ways to exaggerate each of his accomplishments, make excuses for all of his failures and ignore all of his faults when convenient. Sets my BS detector off.