How well would Roberto Duran have done with Canelo/Pacs discipline and modern methods?

We might have had a killer all the way to 160. For sure Duran's lack of discipline cost him in several fights.

 

That’s the thing. There is no PED one can inject into their body that automatically bestows strength and stamina upon them. They still have to do the work. Duran’s history shows he was only sometimes interested in doing the work.

But I think we can all agree that with the benefit of steroids he would have quit against Leonard much more vigorously.

 

Personally It's my belief some of these so called "modern'' training methods are a little overrated.
"Strength and conditioning " may have helped Duran when he's in close grappling for position,
but he'd possibly lose some flexibility, speed, power, and endurance.
Could Pac or Canelo fight a fast paced 15rd fight as Duran did multiple times during his career?
What I've seen from Pac and especially Canelo doubtful, and they both lost flexibility
as they packed on the pounds with additional muscle and went up in weight.
Duran looked sluggish and uninterested at times because that's what typically happened with
fighters with long careers .
That had nothing to do with the type of training (Modern vs vintage) but more about the lack of
discipline and motivation from the fighter.

 

What I’m reading says the effects of high doses (well above what is produced naturally by the body) of testosterone without training are roughly the same as doing with training with no PEDs.

So I don’t see some miraculous monster fighter being created by injecting someone who doesn’t train with testosterone.

The benefits of most PEDs to athletes is in allowing them to train more and ‘harder’ without as much breakdown — quicker recovery = more training = more strength/stamina/whatever.

If Roberto Duran takes testosterone injections after the first Leonard fight without training while drinking and eating ice cream, he’s just going to have more weight to lose before the second fight.

 

It’s all speculative, of course.

Duran may or may not have had spring in his step — one can get bad knees from years of roadwork, for instance.

You mention people you assume have been on PEDs and you’re basically, it would seem, supposing they’ve been on them for whatever period you’re assessing … which may or may not be the case.

Then there’s factors like do those things impact punch resistance — we can never know, for instance, if Pac (presuming he was using PEDs at the time) would have either (a) made that JMM KO punch miss or (b) been able to react better to take some sting off it (by slipping at least partially) or would he have perhaps even taken it better? We don’t know. Like 1,000 other factors.

You have some doing to convince me (not that you have any need to convince me) that just pumping Duran up with juice would make him better if he didn’t take advantage of the chief benefit of PEDs, which is training more/harder/better. I assume he trained some for most fights and trained like a demon possessed for some … but would he be driven to do that if he had a shortcut? We don’t know.

And what do we make if guys we can fairly safely assume moved up in weight naturally — Archie Moore was better at light heavy than middle, Jimmy Ellis seemed to be a bit shy of world class at middle but was a championship-level heavyweight, etc.

What we’re talking about here lacks what’s needed for scientific study — a control group, as well as strict monitoring of what PEDs, what dosages, what frequencies AND what they did workout-wise.

We don’t know for sure — if Canelo and Pac (your choices) were indeed career-long PED users — they would have ended up like if they had never done any PEDs. Both may have been great. Both may have been as great as they became/have become … but perhaps hit a downslide in ability earlier or not risen to as high a weight class.

Then, of course, we do know that one human body doesn’t react the same as every other to any chemical/medicine/compound. Two seemingly identical (or nearly so as far as age, height, weight, eating and exercise habits, etc.) with diabetes (to use an example) may need fairly vastly different dosages for the same result in controlling their blood sugar. It’s the same for PEDs — there’s not a 1:1 ratio that’s ever been recorded of which I’m aware that says this amount of creatine (or whatever) increases everyone who takes it’s performance 10%.

What I think we do know is that PEDs don’t make a fighter, nor any other athlete, great. You can juice me to the gills with whatever Ben Johnson was using — hell, double it and make my eyes completely yellow like a movie monster — and I’m not running as fast as he did. I’m sure the unknown history of boxing (and every other sport) is littered with people who took PEDs/steroids and it didn’t work out/worked to their detriment. Some people probably had heart attacks or other physical ailments related to abuse of substances that are supposed to make them better and fell to the wayside.

I’m not saying no boxer ever benefitted from PEDs. I’m saying on the whole we know a lot less than we don’t know and there is no quantifiable way to track/assess it.

 

Ray Arcel once said if Duran trained like Barney Ross he'd have never lost, of course never is a long time

 

Modern training methods. Is that the reason most guys today are exhausted before 12 rounds?

 

Playing with resistance bands and slipping styrofoam pool toys isn't going to benefit Duran

Schwarzenegger era Mr. Olympia was pre-Duran, it cannot be known for absolute fact that Duran didn't use PEDs, it's not a requirement to end up looking like Evan Fields

 

Roberto Duran used PEDs it was the 70s - 80s he fought in, not the 1920s. The first paper on PED abuse was written about in the 70s. Duran also admitted to using. What modern training methods was he missing exactly? Guys like Salvador Sanchez had doctors in their camp too, wouldn’t surprise me if Roberto had. What’s missing?

 

He would probably be the first lightweight champ to win the heavyweight title