Oscar De La Hoya Better Career Than Sugar Ray Leonard?

If I'm not mistaken, I had Hagler winning by 2 rounds. I'll have to rewatch the fight to give you my scorecards round by round.

 

Yes, cause it is. If he had beaten a 100%, fully prepared Duran, I'd have given him his props, but as it stands, he did not.

 

Nobody said it was Leonard's fault Duran got fat, but the fact remains that Duran was not at 100%.

 

A bit of both. Point being, Hearns was dominating him when both were fresh.

 

Fighters go into fights with loads of niggling injuries, less than perfect fight camps or extra curricular stuff going on - at what point do you draw the line?

 

Ali dominated the early rounds with Frazier in FOTC.

Meldrick was beating JCC in the early rounds.

Dominating when both were fresher in a 15 rounds and fading down the stretch - that's why the greats had 15 round conditioning and timing.

The difference between the elites is usually proven in the champion rounds - Leonard should get credit. Beating that Hearns is a massive achievement.

 

Yeah but how many times have we seen great fighters not prepare properly and lose their belts in this sport? Ray made a huge tactical error in the first fight with Duran by trading with him. Had he used his speed and movement like he did in the 2nd fight, he would have likely won.

Saying Leonard only won because Duran wasn’t 100% takes away from the tactical performance of Leonard in that fight. Was Tyson 100% when he lost to Douglas? Absolutely not but Douglas still fought the fight of his life and earned that world title.

 

Chances are Oscar goes 0-5 and leaves empty handed.

 

De La Hoya is a legend for sure and fought everyone but Leonard was clearly a better fighter and had the better career/legacy without a doubt imo.

 

Oscar is an ATG, but Sugar is at an upper level, deep resume or not.

You fight the opposition you are handed during your time. Sugar fought literally all the top dogss around and won most of the time.

Sure Oscar numbers can look better in his resume; but put him in a tour of force with Hagler, Hearns, Duran and Benitez, and lets see how welll he does.

 

I don't care about ODLH, my point was about SRL vs Duran.

 

For me, the better between 2 boxers is the one who's more skilled, not the one who's better conditioned.

 

Hard to say where a line should be drawn, but if a boxer is not 100 %, I cannot give his opponent much credit when he beats him.

 

Aha - let's look at skill.

Perception - reading the opponent's movement, positioning, twitches, their breathing, seeing when the belief in their eyes starts to fade.

Decision - picking the right technique to utilise given the moment and having mind to managing the risk versus reward ratio of your decision.

Execution - ability to impose the decision on your opponent.

If we keep it simple, skill is the ability to execute the right decision, consistently and under pressure.

Hearns hits harder than Leonard, with height leverage and just as fast with his hands. Leonard's got better footwork and inside fighting ability.

I would argue that being able to conduct yourself in fight camp so that you are able to outlast an opponent or being able to time your output during a fight so that you're still fresh in latter rounds and able to take advantage of a fighter who's not so well versed at doing this, takes considerable skill.

I feel like your perception of skill might be slightly reductive here - I could very well be wrong.