Duran also looked fatigued during the closing stages. He was blowing a bit. I don't necassarily believe he stepped off the gas because he believed the fight was in the bag. Leonard got another wind and closed the show. Duran deserved the decision. Better defense, more varied work, and the heavy punches he landed throughout the fight were better than Leonard's.
I had Duran winning by 1 round, a bunch of the rounds i scored were even. Leonard fought the wrong type of fight, durans prefight antics got to his head. In the rematch leonard fought the right type of fight, and we all know what happened. Duran was a very smart fighter, he knew the best chance he had at beating leonard was forcing a brawl, and he conned leonard into it.
I don't know if we have the rounds the same? But I watched it again last night (after seeing this thread) and scored it 8-7 or 143-142...which is comparably low in light of the judges...they each had 4+ rds. scored even. I found 3 rds extremely close, but still felt i could give the nod (2 of 3 to Duran) to one over the other. Duran clearly controlled the early action (2-4) winning almost one-sided rounds...but nothing that warrented a 10-8 rd in my book.
That's pretty close to my card as well, but I gave the nod to leonard in rd one (very close as you said) and rd 7 to Duran and 14 to Leonard...
In virtue of Ray Leonard holding Duran's head and still missing that bolo punch No seriously, I just went and rewatched it, I think Duran was landing the cleaner shots there. Leonard was more desperate and was putting more into his shots, but other than some good hard body shots and the odd nice head shot, he was missing a hell of a lot in there. I can't reward him for effort, I think Duran was landing nice shots up stairs and downstairs, even if many of them didn't have the sting that Leonard's shots did. I could probably be persuaded into thinking it was an even round, but I don't see Leonard winning it.