Duran Not Hype Witness for Yourself True Greatness

My redundancy is based on years of believing what I am saying. If there were boxing message boards in 1990 I would be saying the same thing as I am today because I believe what I am saying about Roberto. Simply, I think Roberto Duran is great, but not as great as you or other Duran fans think he is.

 

Calling Ray Leonard in 1980 "Green" and then saying Oscar in 2008 at 147lbs was "relatively good" is absolutely outrageous.

 

A wise man sometimes changes his mind.
A fool never does.
Good to see mag has had the same opinion since the nineties.
I myself still believe in the tooth fairy,and i can write a long monologue post about it if you wish....

 

When I looked at Duran I started to realise that this was a boxer who fought no matter what the odds. I started to see him in a different light. He took on bigger, younger and fresher guys. He didn’t have a zillion stipulations in the contracts and for that I started to respect him. I understand that Duran often offended American sensibilities,



This is one one of the things I always loved about Duran. I rememeber after he beat Moore, he was on TV the next weekend when the fight was shown. The announcer told him that Hagler wanted to fight him. Duran just flashed a little grin and said give me a contract to sign. He signed for the fight shortly after that. If you put yourself back to that time it seemed like a crazy thing for Duran to do. But he didn't even hesitate.

Contrast that to Benitez,Leonard, and Hearns who were all bigger and younger then Duran, and who were playing the Hagler game for years. They were always saing they were going to move up and fight Hagler, but it took years for any of them to do it.

 

Well said sir!

Good to read fair mature informative post at long last

Like yourself i lived through that era, amazing times indeed & i've always been of the mind that the self-inflicted humiliation duran heaped upon himself time & time again defied belief & would have had the strongest of men putting a rope around their necks. But then to achieve what was frankly the impossible considering all he'd put himself through & beat Iran Barkley is the sort of stuff that could only be conjured up in Hollywood.

I've always used duran as an example of real life, what man has not made a fool of himself at least once!!! If ever there was an example about getting back up of the floor & dusting yerself down & getting stuck back in & always having to fight against the odd's!! it has to be duran. A truly remarkable man indeed:deal

 

remember and Hamsho was just too big, and I think that hurt Benitez confidence. He fought so well at 154 I am not sure why he had to make the move up to 160, but like most fighters they feel moving up is the natural way to do it.[/quote]


You don't even get why this is another funny post. You are actually not even aware that Benitez is bigger then Duran. Forget about the ages.

This is one of your top 10 beliefs that yo have to have to rank Duran where you rank him.

This goes hand in hand with your other posts.

1- Duran was actually bigger then Hearns.

2- Hearns put up a better fight agains Hagler then Duran did.

3- Duran's win against Leonard at 147 didn't mean that much because 24 year old Leonard was not in his prime, but Hearns win at 154 over 33 year old Dura told us everything.
Just a short list.

 

TWO TIME winner over Hearns!

 

you have to put it in context. Ray was green in context to Duran and Oscar was relatively still good when he fought Pacman. He was not this washed up fighter who Pacman fought. Before that fight I thought Oscar would walk right though Pacman. I thought he was too big, and his performance against Floyd not so far back was good. Now did I say Oscar was relatively good in the history of boxing? No.. He is a great fighter. In 2008.

 

That logic goes both ways. Like me saying maybe you will be a wise man someday and reevaluate Duran. But you won't. I am sure you have thought the same about Duran since the 90s also. On Duran I will not change. That is not a life changing ideology, it is a boxing fact in my mind. Duran had the perfect style for him.
I knew Duran would beat Barkley. You cannot make Duran be able to outbox Barkley or beat Benitez or Hearns now. There is a reason why we have fights to figure out who is better and then evaluate. If Duran was so inept and finished then why did he fight another 40 times and 4 greats in the 80s? He wasted boxings time then fight the greats if he had no chance.

So to Duran fans the logic is Duran was finished the 1980s, and the only question or thing which mattered was if Duran won those fights. Then he would prove he was great, but losing didn't matter because he had excuses? That is the logic. The losses mean nothing, but the wins would have been everything. And the Duran fans do not see this as unfair to his opponents.

 

That last paragraph is just nonsense, but keep deluding yourself.it's getting quite cringeworthy.

 

A wise man sometimes changes his mind.
A fool never does.

 

thanks for telling us you are a fool my friend.

 

Mag,i initially had hagler as my number one man in the eighties,as i got older and studied in depth i realised that leonard and hearns were better p4p than hagler,then finally i realied duran was better p4p than the lot.
Now,all of them have retired really,and we look back and re-evaluate.
Its duran number one,nobody not even the most rabid leonard fans will say leonard is better p4p than duran.
And im not even saying the distance between duran,leonard and hearns is vast. Buts its clearly there.
Your logic is preposterous and totally biased when it comes to evaluating the three. You have to realise duran is the OLDEST,SMALLEST and furthest from his 'prime' than any other of the fab four,And he fought them all when they were in their prime and best weights,while he was not.....
Shall we evaluate hearns' career on the barkley losses and the kinchen win,ignoring his fanstastic performances in his best weights,and in his youth?
That is all...

 

Thanks for the kind words durananimal.

To Mag1965...seriously, mate, there are loads of fighters who deserve criticism for the way they handled their careers, missed opponents, beat up on past it figthers, etc... Your criticisms would be better served on those guys. Guys like Duran and Hearns are what boxing is all about. Fighters prepared to take risks and not be scared of sometimes biting off more than they can chew.

Duran, like Leonard, Hearns, Hagler, Monzon, Griffith, Napoles, etc... Could beat any man at their weights on a given night. When you are as good as these guys then there are circumstances as to why they sometimes lost. You can see them as excuses if you don't like a fighter but when you've proved that (1) you're prepared to get in with the best even when the odds are against you and (2) you can win at least some of those fights then I think as fans we need to be a bit more generous.

The fact that Duran was often a mess and could return to a well that should have dried up a decade ago shows just how great he was.

I believe he's the greatest fighter of the colour TV age - and by a fair margin. You can throw in other names and argue it out but I don't see what's to gain by putting him down. 'No Mas' was a disgrace but in the end it hurt him more than anyone else.