Name shot fighter who shockingly beat reigning young champion

Hearns - Hill

 

Coincidentally, I watched that fight again last night. Honestly, I thought the judging was really bad. It looks like Barkley won eight or nine out of twelve rounds. Some of the rounds were close, but Barkley landed more and was the aggressor throughout.

 

No way. Moore was a novice by comparison. The referee was partial, to say the least. Duran thumbed and blinded Moore in one eye, laced his face, etc., and the referee warned Moore! Also, the fight should have been stopped much sooner. His cornermen and the ref should be ashamed of themselves.

 

I happen to think that this win should get more attention than it does.

There have been very few cases of a welterweight champion, defeating somebody who held the lineal light heavyweight title.

Barbados Joe Walcott, Mickey Walker, and who?

 

But at the time, Wasn't Duran considered shot or at least out of his prime leading toward his fight with moore?

 

Guillermo Jones didn't quite do that, but his jump up was notable.

 

Absolutely.

Moore was 5-2 fave and the vast majority were picking him. Duran won a little bit of fanfare with his win over Cuevas but most simply considered Cuevas a shot fighter. Moore was inexperienced but had beaten a couple of fine fighters and was thought to be on the up and up.

 

For sure. Hill was considered the next big thing at 175 and had a lot of great press going on. Hill was a 2 to 1 fave and better and most considered him a certainly over a faded Hearns.

 

Duran was 32 at the time, not old or shot. Moore had 12 fights going into that bout. Duran had 80! Moore was, indeed, a novice by comparison.

 

He was considered old and shot at the time. It's all easy to say now.

 

Really? He was 37 years old, and did not have a single win against a top 20 opponent ever again. Quite frankly, he hadn't had a meaningful win in the 3 years prior to his fight with Wlad either.

 

I agree that his footwork and stamina were gone by then but he still had fast hands and a big punch.

Sanders was a bit of a disappointment to me in that he mostly squandered his prime fighting cans. I really wish they had sent him to America and crammed a Tysonesque schedule on him. He could have been right up there with the best of them. Volbrecht needed to keep his nose in the gym.

Unfortunately he was such an easy going guy that he never really had the inclination to go out and crush people, despite what his fighting style in the ring indicated. That meant his motivation was ... um, low. So darn disappointed when he pitched up with a paunch to fight Vitali. AGH. He just didn't give a f*ck.

 

Not Tommy Hearns.

He challenged the lineal title at WW and MW. He held it at LMW.

SMW and LHW were just belts.

 

I remember this fight. I was living in France and had no means of finding out who had won. Based on recent showings particularly vs Kinchen (for both men), I didn't hold out much hope for Tommy. I thought the Leonard rematch was his last trip to the well.

Anyway, the French press didn't mention it. When I came home to the UK, I'd missed the weekly Boxing News that would have covered it and Boxing Monthly had yet to come out. I was watching Nelson-Fenech I and Tommy was in the crowd and it was mentioned that he had just won the light heavyweight title. Hard to believe the hardships we endured before the internet.

 

There was an air of fun and expectation to it though, too. Having to wait a month for the next issue of the boxing magazines to come out, poring over the list of worldwide results sorted by weight class, to see who was rising and falling. There was always at least a couple surprises in there, like finding Easter eggs.