So at 160, and featuring Gerald McClellan at his most dangerous.. Would Roberto Duran be biting off more than he could chew here? Or could the legendry Hands of stone, cause another upset?
There isn't a single fighter, whose debut or last fight was more recent than Duran's equivalent, that I rate above Roberto on my p4p ATG list. However, even I acknowledge that a prime GMan at 160lbs or above would be a dangerous, dangerous fight for him. There comes a point where size disparity is more telling than skill disparity.
McClellan didn't have a good record in the 2nd half of a fight, unlike Hearns he was outboxed twice in his career by fighters that wern't on the upper echelon level. But McClellan was devastating early on and like Hearns had range and dynamite in both hands. The fight could go two ways either McClellan blitz's Duran early, or Duran weathers the early storm to outbox McClellan in the 2nd half of the fight.
I think Barkley might’ve been more savvy than Gerald, Iran was brought up old school and learned on the job. I don’t think Gerald was very good.
Barkley was using his strengths very well in that fight. He wasn't just slugging away with lefts and rights, but using them at the right times and the way a taller, bigger fighter should. Duran was just incredibly tough and still had his skills which made it an even match. I still see that Duran beating Gerald.
McClellan gets that Tony Ayala 'career ended too early mystique' type backing here in the Classic forum. He was an absolutely huge puncher, a giant at the weight who also had a great chin. He also hardly ever threw more than two punches at a time, was defensively poor, and had one win over an opponent who was world rated at the time, against an older, smaller Julian Jackson. The Duran who fought Barkley was far more skilled in defending himself than Jackson or the other bodies McClellan hammered in a round apiece in his title fights at 160. If Duran is still there after 8, this gets really interesting.
I’ll say it like this. Duran had a far superior skill set than McClellan did, but If he got hit hard on the chin by Gerald it would be a big problem