Emanuel Steward: “Whenever you think of Tommy Hearns, you think of Ray Leonard”

Just seen this on the homepage, gonna read it soon. Cheers!

 

Most boxers become imortal in a great series of a great fight.

Some one says Ali, and you think of Joe Frazier.

Or Ingo Patterson.
Or Dempsey Tunney
Pep Saddler
Rocky Zale

And so on and so on.

I am at odds with what to class SRL though. Its either Hearns or Duran for me imo.

 

Whenever you thin of Lewis or Holyfield or Spinks or Holmes, you think of Mike Tyson. Thats some aura!

 

I'd definitely say Hearns is Leonard's greater rival, if only because Leonard's two victories over Duran are so often overlooked as failures to reach the optimal performance. It's interesting that Steward thinks that Leonard won the first fight with Duran though. Not saying it's true, but it really shows how much respect he has for Leonard, imo, and it should serve to remind Duran fans that the fight was hardly a blowout as implied by some of his deeper fanatics.

Like Steward said, Hearns and Leonard pretty much met at their best and had a back and forth fight for the ages. I also found his story about their sparring interesting, particularly that Hearns was able to outbox Leonard. Obviously too late to ask anymore questions, but I would have asked why he didn't have Hearns box from the beginning if he knew that he could beat Leonard that way.

I think it's an insult to Hearns-Leonard to even compare their bouts to a bout that hasn't even happened yet in May-Pac. Both fighters are good, maybe even ATGs, but as Steward implies, Hearns or Leonard would have cleaned out the current WW division. Maybe I'm just fed up with Roach saying Floyd's legs are gone or Roger saying Pac doesn't got ****, but it's pretty refreshing to hear a trainer, even a sometimes revisionist like Steward, be so conciliatory.

Anyway, I thought it was a pretty insightful read, thanks for sharing the link.

 

Nice interview. thanks for posting.

 

Nice interveiw,

Manny thought that Ray won the first fight with Duran ??, is he trying to built Ray up so Tommy looks better?/ is it because he is friends with Ray? or am I missing something here.

 

Definitely seems clear from the interview that he thinks very highly of Sugar. I don't think it's to build up Hearns. If he really wanted to build up Hearns, he'd say Duran won the first fight to make Hearns' 2nd round destruction of Duran that much greater. The first Duran-Leonard fight however was very close, and I think his main point was to highlight that Leonard was an excellent finisher in that fight and of course the Hearns fights.