The "Leonard Fought Duran's Fight" Fallacy

I agree, I dont think the fight was so much leonard being forced into durans fight, more that he didn't fight the best fight for himself and allowed duran's strengths to shine.

was it talked about before the rematch?

 

Ray admitted that Duran's behaviour got to him before the fight and he allowed himself to be influenced by it.

This is n't taking anything away from Duran. Both men went into the trenches and were tough as hell !

 

From your argument, you could counter and say that Leonard's most effective style was his classic boxing style, the reason that he had to resort to that pressure fighter style against Hearns was because Tommy was out boxing him so he had to go to plan B.
whereas against Duran, Leonard never really committed to his usual plan A, and was in it for a brawl. And as a previous poster said, Duran's skill was able to shine because that is his preferred style of fighting. And Leonard attributes the reasons he did this was because of Duran's psychological warfare.

 

Duran's complete lack of respect for Leonard and also his complete lack of respect for Leonard's wife, calling her names and such, influenced Leonard. He was basically determined from that point on to show Duran that he could stand up to him in the ring.

 

But that wasn't his original gameplan as can be clearly seen on film. He only pressured Hearns once he realised how much he had hurt Tommy from a left hook (either in round 5 or 7, haven't watched it in a while.) and that he could hurt Tommy.

 

It's kind of irrelevant.
Boxing is about winning. Any loser can say "Oh, I didn't fight the right fight.", "if only I'd done X, Y and Z .."
Obviously that's often/always true, but that's boxing.
And even winners don't fight the PERFECT fight. You can be sure Duran made mistakes in Montreal too. That's boxing.

Clearly, in New Orleans, it could easily be seen that Duran fought the wrong fight too. Quitting like that was 100% wrong.

 

I rarely do the Duran-Leonard thing but I have to disagree with this. Ray didn't decide to fight Duran like that because of anything Duran did. In the lead up to the fight, dundee made it clear that he felt Ray was the bigger, harder hitting fighter and that he was going to stop Duran from coming forward.

 

Angelo also wise-cracked, "Duran's a low ball hitter. That's how he won his title from Ken Buchanan." They made it clear that they were going to try turning the tables by testing El Cholo's own body, but quickly discovered [as Cosell noted] that Duran's posture didn't allow for this.

Duran-Palomino supplied all the warning signs to the Leonard camp of how capable Roberto could be at WW. Then, they really got concerned when he weighed in at a well conditioned 144. Still, Ray had to actually be in the ring with him before knowing how to box him in a rematch. Their first ten rounds were a 9-1 near whitewash for the Panamanian, much like Duran-Palomino had been. After Duran-Barkley in 1988, no chances were taken in their rubber match, and SRL did exactly what he should have done.

 

Bingo, that's my understand of it too, which for some reason many posters fail to want to acknowledge.

 

Leonard did get the **** scared out of him by Duran, and therefore tried to man up to him, and, in terms of the scoring and such, failed, barely but failed.

 

Your right but when Angelo Dundee as media friendly and influential as he was is the one making the excuse they are taken as Gospel. He had an excuse for every fight Ali lost too.

That and the fact that Leonard was a huge American Star.

 

Duran won the first fight fair and square. He imposed his will and skill on Leonard. In the rematch he did not seem in the same condition and lost fair and squareas well.

 

You're quite right. Rather than fighting the "wrong fight" Leonard fought the way he usually fought: As a classic boxer-puncher rather than a slick pure boxer in the Ali mold. Watch any of Leonard's fights from that period and you can see it. He didn't become a pot-shotting track star until Hagler.

The truth is Leonard would have beaten pretty much any welter in the world at that time that night; it's just that Duran uncorked a career defining masterpiece. That's what made it such a magnificent fight.

 

I thought Duran won the first fight pretty handily in terms of rounds won. I had it 11-4. Now, a lot of them were close, but Duran seemed to get the better of it.