Marciano's entire career. He took his extremely limited abilities to their fullest expression in a historical vacuum for the division.
Shoeshining and show-boating shouldn't have been enough for him to win that and I'm surprised the judges fell for it. Cheesy. Hagler won
Joe Calzaghe. Went his whole career without beating one elite opponent. The top dogs like RJJ and Hopkins were old. He then comes a few years before the next generation of dogs like GGG, Canelo, Ward, Bivol, Kovalev, and Beterbiev.
Right Place, Right Time and Right OWNERSHIP... remove the 3rd factor, and a good few 'champions' would never have been one.
Not forgetting that Leonard was also past his prime in 1987. And this is coming from someone who was a bigger fan of Hagler than he was of Leonard in the eighties. It was a magnificent achievement of Sugar Ray's. A fight between them in the early eighties would have been just as close. Probably splitting a series between them.
Responded to your post while groggy. Misread it. Gervonta, Garcia. Teo, Zepeda, Prograis, Taylor, Lomachenko, A. Russel, and even Pitbull would be much more intersting fights. Haney--Kambosos played out exactly like I expected and now they're running it back. Shakur would be a really special match up and I think Shakur would take it.
I think Andy Ruiz is a good one because he benefited greatly from Anthony Joshua's prior opponent getting hurt and from still being in ring shape because of a fight he had the month before. Also, I think Joshua was looking ahead of Ruiz. He was probably thinking about Fury or Wilder.
Marvin Hagler is fortunate he didn’t come along a few years earlier when Monzon was ruling the roost. The Hagler who fought Vito Antuofermo to a draw in his first title effort doesn’t beat Monzon. Maybe a later version does, maybe not, but if Hagler came along sooner he might have been disheartened at being outclassed in his first title shot and never reached the form that he did.
