What happens if Duran says no (instead of no mas) to Leonard rematch in late 1980?

Where does Stone Hands go from there?

It’s an interesting mental exercise.

Leonard’s side made it clear that if Duran didn’t want the Nov. 25 rematch (5 1/2 months after the Montreal meeting that Duran won) that he’d take his toys and go somewhere else — Duran can’t make the huge money fighting anyone else so he’d have to wait.

Most likely we see Ray fight someone like Pipino Cuevas (who had lost to Hearns soon after the first Leonard-Duran meeting) and then line up a title fight with the Hit Man, who holds the WBA title. That takes Hearns off the table for Duran — fighting Leonard, boxing’s biggest box office attraction, is worth more to Thomas’ bank account than fighting Duran.

We have to assume Roberto doesn’t fight until late winter/early spring of 1981 — say February through April range — if he needed more time to train and get right. By that time, his best money-making chances are off the table (Pipino and Hearns, and those together don’t add up to what a Leonard rematch would put in his pockets). And make no mistake: Duran is motivated by the big money. He’s not at this point interested in making $100k for a no-name opponent in a non-televised fight in Panama.

The only reasonable choice for a bigger name left is Wilfred Benitez. El Radar can presumably still make 147, but he’s been fighting around 150 with three wins (Johnny Turner, Tony Chiaverini and Pete Ranzany) through 1980 after losing to Ray in 1979, and by May of 1981 he’s fighting at junior middle to beat Maurice Hope for the title. So maybe he’d go back down to welter or maybe not.

As we know from their fight at 154, Wilfred is not an easy proposition for Duran and unless he finds his Montreal inner beast, it’s a cakewalk for Benitez if they were to fight in early 1981. Even if we get a better version of Roberto than we got for his Benitez fight, it’s iffy at best that Duran can beat Wilfred from the dominance we did see when they fought.

That leaves guys like Randy Shields, Adolfo Viruet (who gave Roberto a bit of a problem stylistically at a lighter-weight fight), Jorgen Hansen and Clint Jackson (green but a southpaw and a guy with a strong motor).

In short, I don’t think Duran gets up for any of the above. He mails it in during training and makes weight but doesn’t have the sharp edge he’ll need to make any of those fights easy — think of the version of Roberto we got for Zeferino Gonzalez or later Nino Gonzalez. He’s depressed/frustrated at letting the huge Leonard rematch get away from him and Ray is ghosting him, saying ‘you had your chance, I moved on, we can talk about it in a couple of years if you get your **** together.’

I see Duran waddling to an ugly decision or even being upset if he doesn’t take training seriously. If he does win, he probably has to have another ho-hum defense and risks losing a disinterested decision to another low-light or moving up to junior middle. Presuming Leonard beats Hearns in this timeline, maybe Ray says ‘how about you two fight and I’ll take on the winner,’ and we know Duran doesn’t get past Thomas in such a scenario.

That’s what I’m thinking such a timeline would look like. Let’s not rehash no mas here but look at a world where that didn’t happen … how do you see it playing out?

 

Let’s keep in mind that he actually has to defend his title at some point or give it up. When he did fight Leonard in the rematch, nearly six months had elapsed. Should he be given a year to party before giving a contender a chance? I don’t see it.

I actually think his manager was looking out for him — if they don’t sign and force the Leonard rematch, who’s to say Roberto doesn’t balloon up to 300 pounds and is never viable again? What makes anyone think that knowing a Leonard rematch was being negotiated and that a late November date was the target that Duran — who wasn’t motivated by that — was going to wake up one day in October and say ‘I’m’ going to start training like a champion even though the big money fight is off the table … but I’m going to train like a demon for Randy Shields for a couple hundred thousand!’

Leonard would have bypassed him if Duran didn’t want the rematch — it was take it or leave it. Roberto didn’t have the luxury of saying ‘I think I’ll party til next summer, then I’ll start trying and by the fall I’ll be within reach of where I can make 147 in good shape with a long training camp and we can fight in the fall on my terms.’

The manager’s job is to maximize a guy’s earnings, not prevent him from losing because he isn’t enough of a professional to actually go to the gym and show a the discipline expected of a prizefighter. It’s not to protect him until the day (which may never come) that he decides to take his job seriously. Taking the Leonard rematch (and the biggest payday below heavyweight history at that time) didn’t put Duran in physical danger … it just made him go back to the gym and get ready to fight again.

 

I don’t think Hearns would have been available because he’d certainly want the bigger-money, higher-profile fight with Leonard and money talks. Roberto would have been on the outside looking in — both Ray and Thomas could say ‘you go fight for relative peanuts if you decide to get your fat ass in shape and act like a professional, and after we fight the winner will dictate terms to you if you haven’t managed to slog through a halfass title defense against some nobody and lost that title by then.’

 

When do you think those would happen? He was six months into his reign (this wasn’t the time of two-defenses-a-year) and one has to presume he would not have started training in October had the rematch not been signed. So do you think he would have suddenly stopped the party train for a non-title fight in December or January and gotten serious?

Depending on which accounts you believe, he’s 25 to 50 pounds over the weight limit when he began training.If he went into November or December still partying, he’d be ginormous whenever he actually waddled into a gym at that point. Which means probably three months needed to get him down to middle or junior middle in decent enough fighting shape for a non-title fight.

That puts him in probably February/March of 1981 before he’s ready to fight not even at welter. A second fight add a couple of months, and then it would be at least a full year since winning the title that he would defend it? I think (a) there’s a chance he’d lost a non-title fight if he kept pigging out and partying for much longer, ruining any intrigue of a rematch and truly wasting one of the biggest wins in welter history, and (b) at some point he’d be stripped of his title for not defending it. He wasn’t injured so they wouldn’t give him an extension based upon ‘well he’s really lazy and he’s been eating and getting drunk a lot,’ lol.

 

I can’t see a way where Duran doesn’t get beat before getting to Leonard again if he turns down the rematch.

I doubt Hearns would say ‘I’ll take a $1-2M fight vs. Duran to unify because he has a belt rather than a $5M+ payday vs. Leonard, who is the biggest draw in the sport,” but if he did … he knocks Duran out (badly).

If he can’t get Hearns, even if he fights a Hansen and wins somehow, while he’s waiting for Hearns-Leonard to settle that side of it, he probably ends up fighting Benitez because that’s probably the only $1M payday out there for him. Duran had a following but he was never going to command huge purses where he’s the A side without a Leonard (or Hagler or Hearns, etc) on the marquee with him. And if he fights Wilfred, he gets handled (as did happen when they fought).

Then it’s down to what kind of mental tailspin Duran goes into and whether he manages to lose to a Kirkland Laing to further lower his stature and ability to make big fights.