Opinions of old-timers back in 1980 on Duran as a lightweight. Interesting indeed.

The important thing about Roberto is we have the luxury of having so much of his best years on film...I feel pretty confident that at his best he beats every other lightweight to lace them up..except probably Williams and Sweet Pea im not totally confident on.
I try my best to average it out as best I can..obviously a bloke like Leonard had a far superior resume man for man but I havent seen enough of him to say he was as good a fighter as Roberto.

 

I don't really agree that those quotes show "current" fighters once agian being undervalued per se.

More so i tend to agre with Conteh, that it just shows the mentality of the older american guys, most of whom had been heavily involved in boxing and not just fans from a distance.the majority just can't get past their own era, which extended to the sixties at most.

america didn't do too well in the seventies outside of the heavyweights and i've always thought a lot of their older boxing guys were quick to dismiss it entirely as a weak decade because of that.

 

Well I will prove my statement.
Duran defended his title 12 times ,against he two men you mentioned, one he beat on a foul,the other floored him before losing.
Now to the others.
Jimmy Robertson 26-5-1He had lost 3 of his last 5 fights
Hector Thompson ,the only name on his record was a 33 year old Joe Tetteh who lost all his subsequent fights.
Guts Ishimatsu 25-10-5,his last 2 opponents before challenging Duran were 1-2-0 and 0-0-0,How did he merit a title shot?
Leoncio Ortiz 25-5-1 he beat no one .
Lou Bizzarro he never beat anyone.
Alvaro Rojas 3-4-0 ,he had lost 4 of his last 7 fights and been kod in his previous fight ,he never fought again after challenging Duran.How did he get a shot at the crown?
Masataka Takayama 21-5-1 he had lost 4 of his last 9 fights, a credible challenger ? NO!
Vilomar Fernandez 19-5-1 he had lost his previous fight to a guy with only 8 fights.
Edwin Viruet the best of the bunch he went the distance to lose a dec.
Ray Lampkin.his last 3 opponents before meeting Duran were 11-19-1,30-22-5, 13-13-0.
If you think these guys compare to the men Benny Leonard ,Joe Gans etc fought you must be in dreamland.
To summarise Duran fought 2 greats at Lightweight ,1 he beat on a foul the other split a series with him,the rest of his competition was dross.
I think I've proved my point.

 

Not much of a great then really?.

 

With a fairly broad boxrec analysis...well done.

You might have noticed Fernandez went on to beat a little known fighter named Alexis Arguello 18 months later..in his prime. Ferenandez was a good fighter, a nuisance for the whole time against Roberto.

Alvaro Rojas did not have a 3-4 record..My copy of the fight did not have the announcement of his record and its in spanish but I have been told what it is before from reliable sources and it was something respectable..he had nearly 20 wins from memory..Just look at the blokes he fought in his 8 fight career, nearly all either ranked, former or future title contenders and in 2 cases current world champs.
Its pretty safe to assume his record is not complete.

Ray Lampkin was an excellent talent..A top amateur and he had showed his ability in is two fight with DeJesus. He was a top contender at the time.

Guts Ishimitsu's ability is well known..he would go on to become a champ and he had already challenged Laguna for the title and been in with guys like Rose and Barrientos.

Hector Thompson is one of the best fighters to ever come out of oz..Regardless of how he got the shot, he certainly proved himself in the two title shots he got.

If you want to play the boxrec game you can clearly see that Leonard and Gans fought their fair share of guys with dismal records. At least with a lot of Duran's their is a bit of footage around of them to gauge how they faired against lesser opposition, more often then not they were fighters worthy of a title shot.

Duran's era was not strong..but Im sick of people writing it off without knowing what the hell the fighters he fought were about.

 

Thompson was a damn good fighter with great strength.Very talented and gave Cervantes a great fight.He might have been an unknown coming into the Duran fight but he did prove his worth after it.

Duran did fight a number of mediocre challengers, but it was a fairly even split betwen them and solid to very good fighters.Overall not on the level of Someone like Leonard's comp, but about on par with the previous decades Ortiz imo.

The only other fight that maybe should have been made, other than a buchanan rematch was with Rodolfo Gonzalez, but the window of opportunity for that one was quite small.

 

That would have been a very interesting fight at that stage..A young, unpolished Duran vs someone like the Cat.

Dare I say it could have ended in tears for Roberto. Wasnt he in some kind of box-off to face Duran just before he got his title?

Always thought a young Duran vs Vilafor would have been a good one aswell at that time.

 

No he was undeniably a great, my number 4 at Lightweight ,my point is his opposition ,Buchanan and Dejesus excluded ,was not that stellar.

 

Some of Ike Williams opponents
Juan Zurita 132-23-1
Enrique Bolanos 47-4-2
Ronnie James 112-15-5
Tippy Larkin 117-10-1
Sammy Angott 75-19-6
Lulu Constantino 90-13-6
Willie Joyce 56-11-7
Maxie Berger 96-19-9
Bobby Ruffin 73-24-13
Bob Montgomery 75-12-3
Kid Gavilan 42-3-2
Jesse Flores 44-4-4
Beau Jack 85-20-4
Throw in Johnny Bratton too.Do you think Duran's competiton was in that class?
Dont misunderstand me ,I think Williams and Duran would be a picke em fight but their respective resumes are not comparable.

Ive looked at Rojas he had a good win over Clemente Sanchez but lost to the other decent fighters he met, when you come up with additional fights we can take them into account till then we go on what we know ok?

 

It puzzles me that Duran didnt take on any 126lb-130lb titlists or former titlists like Arguello, Escallera, Villaflor, Serrano and all the many others, I mean he didnt fight any of them

 

Some of Carlos Ortiz 's opponents.

Sugar Ramos 50-2-3
Flashe Elorde 79-20-2
Johnny Bizzarro 55-9-2
Joe Brown 85-21-11
Doug Vaillant 29-6-4
Teruo Kasaka 47-6-1
Arthur Persley 71-14-3
Duilio Loi 102-1-7
Cisco Andrade 44-7-1
Kenny Lane 57-6-0
Dave Charnley 30-3-1
Johnny Busso 34-6-0
Joey Lopes 45-15-3
Kazuo Takayama 52-13-9
Maurice Cullen 25-3-2
Ismalwe Laguna 40-2-1
Nicolino Locche 61-2-12 [drew]

Any one think Duran's lightweight resume compares with this or Williams record?

 

Technically your including LWW and WW fights in both resumes and excluding Duran's wins at that weight, unless your doing 135 or under you have to remove a few names (Galivan/Loche etc) from both or add Leonard and Palomino

Duran also arguably has the best 2 LW wins, Buchanon is horribly underrated now, 43-1 when he faced Duran and has wins over Laguana (in PR), Ortiz, Hernandez, Jim Watt amongst all the others

 

palomino was a good under-stated win,he was solid and one of the best left hookers i've seen

 

Mate I never even once stated that Duran had a superior resume to these guys at the weight...Nor his era was stronger.

"Duran's era was not strong" was the exact words I used.

But all you have done is looked up boxrec to rubbish his opponants and frankly mcvey I would expect better of you because thats something a punk who knows nothing of sport outside of the last 5 years would do..And that you are not.
You have not taken into account the quality of fighters on film, how well they faired against Roberto and other good fighters and havent really looked past the raw stats.
I find myself having to put things into perspective for people on this issue quite often because all they want to look at is the numbers involved. And Im not even a Duran expert, a expert on the division and wouldnt consider myself an expert on the sport in the slightest..But for the life of me I cant see why people just make their minds up on something without truly looking into it.

And as PP stated you did take non-title bouts not at the weight into account..of which Roberto had some very good ones himself.

 

I forgot Marcel, if were talking none title fights, thats a corker of a win