had of beaten hagler in 1982 83, would he be considered on par with ray robinson or would he need another win over hearns and other great opponent of that era i reckon people would just say that hagler was not that good. if srl beats him first time there would be no chance of a rematch
Well for those people saying he wasnt that good, if that were so Ray would have promptly taken that fight as he did Lalonde. That's how you get Ray Leonard to notice you. You put on a shaky performance as Hearns did in his bout with Kinchen but a dominant performance, forget it! Leonard wouldnt have the guts and if he did, by the time he entered into the ring he'd dead on arrival Forget all that crap about his being the miracle man. He couldnt even beat a man he was favored to beat showing, that any man with sharp reflexes would have had him in trouble from the word go. Roberto Duran proved that. Terry Norris proved that. And if Kevin Howard had the size, he would have ended his comeback right then and there To answer your question tho, everyone including myself would have to concede that Ray was on par with Robinson because Hagler was on par with Robbie. It would have been nice but only Duran had the guts to get in the ring with him instead of Tommy or Ray
or he could bypass Hagler and instead take a few others like Pryor, Curry, Hearns rematch, Nunn, McCallum, Norris, and Jackson but he'd never get thru those either. It would be too demanding for him
I think he`d need Hearns, Pryor, Duran rubber match (about 7 yrs earlier than it actually happened) & McCallum too to be honest as well as erasing the Norris & Camacho fights. SRR had 202 fights with something like 175 wins, takes a lot to top that even without the Gavilans, Armstrongs & Lamotta`s thrown in.
robinson was a dominant destructive welterweight champion who moved up...leonard was at contender level for ages. then unified the titles. leonard needed to stay there for 5 years at bare minmum to be as dominant. then move up to middleweigth and keep winning until 1995, while having a successful comeback in 97. beating duran,hagler,hearns,mcallum,norris,camacho,benitez successfully.. maybe losing to duran. but still nothing on ray robinson. resume wise yah semme:blood:rasta
The secret is that leonard would probably have beaten hagler in 83 anyway. If leonard had not have detached his retina we would now be speaking of him in robinson like terms. As it is he is robinson like in skills,quality and top wins,but will always fall short in longevity and full resume. H2H leonard at 147 is a monster...
Leonard top 4 wins are as good as anyone out there in my opinion. His legacy in all time discussions are let down by lack of longevity and depth of names in his record. Beating hagler in his prime would have helped no doubt but not been enough. Another 20-30 fights against decent opposition and add Pryor and McCallum then you could have started talking
