Best welterweight Montreal Leonard could outslug/outbrawl?

Some stories came out after the No Mas fight that Duran's trainer Freddie Brown and Bob Arum spoke of. Brown said Duran was not behaving like a professional athlete, the poor street kid had arrived , after Montreal Duran ate huge steaks every morning for breakfast. Arum went to visit Duran in Panama and found him around the pool with dozens of people ,cases of champagne and everyone eating steak. He saw Duran and thought, he's at least 190 pounds .Even Ray Arcel had discussed postponing the fight with Leonard but Duran's manager Eleta thought, If Duran loses we'll make even more money on the 3rd fight.. Duran's melt down was inevitable, he didn't handle success very well and it took some years before he straightened himself out with some quality efforts .

 

I know the stories.
But Mr. Brown and Mr.Arcel also said prior to the fight
in New Orleans Duran was in the best shape of his
career, even better than he was in Montreal.
It's what one chooses to believe and their
prospective or agenda I guess.

 

What was Arcel going to say? The truth that he wasn't in fighting shape? Arcel and Brown had been in the business for about 60 years , they knew what they had , Arcel always said ,you fight like you train, I believe they knew he would probably lose they just never figured Duran would have a melt down and throw it all away.

 

But that's my point, no one knows exactly what happened
behind the scene prior to the "Battle in New Orleans's ".
And there are multiple reasons (Excuses?) for Duran's
behavior.

 

Yeah,Hearns would later learn the hard way from this fight too,he needs a defense for infighting.. something he doesn't have at the time.
(How did a fighter with twig like legs and lanky frame forgot how to clinch fr)

 

I’m pretty sure he’s talking about Leonard from Hearns 1 vs Duran Flash.

 

Leonard said what you say in his book The Big Fight.

 

That’s true, Basilio beat Robinson and Leonard respectfully falls quite short of Robinson he doesn’t do anything better, I’d pick Basilio to beat SRL with decent odds.

 

Valuev

 

Didn’t Leonard admit in an interview after the fight that he couldn’t do what he wanted to do in Montreal?
He tried to outbox Duran at range but was feinted in to an inside battle.
I think I remember him stunning Duran once, for a moment, with a left hook. Can’t remember a significant right hand landed on Duran the whole fight.
I think everyone was surprised by how fast Duran was and he was so clever, as great as Leonard was Duran was the smarter boxer.
Not so smart coming in to New Orleans in the shape he did of course.

 

Leonard could probably go out slug Basilio in a rematch with decent chances,it'll be close though,and Leonard needs to be clever.

Or maybe he could do that to Gil Turner/Gaspar Ortega,even Charley Scott and Jose Stable too I'd say...four of those were one of the more exciting contenders at the time.

But the second option was more viable for me to be honest,Montreal Leonard..while he really proved his heart and guts,was a bit fired up going into the fight.

 

Who knows except him and Roger perhaps...I know Leonard had power and they might have figured out that he was the bigger guy-back when there was not so many steroids in boxing....