Thomas Hearns

I agree, Tommy was at his peak at 154 and would be a beast for any opponent

 

King and Arum for all of there faults made
some excellent fight cards back in the day,

 

It can be reasonably argued Thomas Hearns
was the most accomplished of the fab five.
(I always include Benitez)
Wasn't the best fighter of the group (Noticed
I didn't use the word "Boxer".)
But in accomplishments he tops all of them....

 

No

The upset of Virgill Hill was impressive I have to say.
So were the wipeouts of Cuevas and Duran.
The decision over Benitez was great too.

However, Dennis Andries was very beatable and one cannot dismiss the brutal loss to Iran Barkley and that he simply wasn't durable enough to even last three rounds against Hagler.

Hearns was great but his durability issues were exposed.

He's thought of as one of the big four but should be big five

Benitez is the one who is underrated

 

His super cards were great whatever we think about him as a person

I was at Vincent Pettway v. Simon Brown. What a card

And the pay per view cards he put on while tyson was in prison were well worth the price

 

I think this is in part due to his build. You stun a fire hydrant like Tyson they buckle down or stop for a moment and they're back to normal.

You catch a telephone pole like hearns and they take noticably longer to regain their balance.


Even if they they were hurt the same and recovered in the same amount of time the lanky fellow will look worse off.

When you mix in Hearn's style of movement, seeming lack of coordination, tendency to drop his hands, leaky defense and propensity to trade and he can look in worse shape than he actually is.

 

Even though Hearns was still a bit raw down @ 147 compared to higher weights, I think he was @ his most physically imposing @ that weight & would've been no less than 50-50 H2h vs. any WW that wasn't either Sugar Ray. Unfortunately for him, he shared the division w/ 1 of those Sugar Rays & he was never going to keep his weight down there for very long anyway.

 

I think the problem w/ rating Hearns in a P4P sense is that he jumped thru weight classes so quickly w/o carving out a more extensive/dominant legacy in any single 1. I think his H2h capability far exceeds when he actually had the opportunity to prove down @147.

 

OMG.
I remember that card. In DC right? In the main event they had a referee that lost control of the situation. I think Pettway's trainer wanted to hit the referee for not taking charge.
BHop fought underneath I believe against Mercado. Don King almost got knocked out by Butch Lewis.

 

When people talk about Tommy's greatness they most often mention his contests with SRL & Hagler, and his impressive destructions of Cuevas & Duran, which is fair enough.

I feel he doesn't get enough credit for the Hill win. Iirc, Virgil, an Olympic medalist, was 30-0 at LHW in the pro's including 10 wins in title fights, going into their contest. I'm curious, how many, if any, former WW titlests would you favour to beat that version of Hill?

 

His win over Nate Miller, a comparatively only slightly faded ex-CW champ, is also criminally overlooked.

 

Yes the fact he was the biggest of that group and couldn't beat Barkley is held against him. People will give Duran the benefit of the doubt for the bad H2H against top opponents cause hes small but they aren't going to do the same for Hearns 2-4-1 against the big 4 and Barkley.

Also tweener divisions split his resume into several pieces as he spent notable time at every division from 147 to CW. His legacy was probably hurt by the existence of tweeners more than any boxer in history. With most of these multi division champs they still spend most of their career in 1 or 2. Duran, Leonard and Hagler have got their ATG resumes at LW/WW/MW. At the top level Hearns split his time between all 6 fairly evenly and his shortest stint was 3 fights at 168. At 154 he was 5-0 with 4 title defenses but thats all he had. In olden times he'd have went WW/MW/LHW and tried a HW run at the end.

At 175 Hearns win over prime Hill is one of the most elusive wins one can get but thats virtually all he has despite technically being a 2x champion. Besides Barkley who beat him he is probably the single least accomplished lineal champ in 175s history despite having a win over possibly the most accomplished one. Barkleys only other fight at 175 is a loss to Maske. 2 fights in a weight class winning and losing the lineal title against undefeated opponents. Its hard what to make of eithers 175 run.

Hearns 147 run is the most impressive if viewed in the context of the era before Leonard, Beneitz and Duran. 32-1 with 30 KOs and wins over Pipino, Espada and Gray. But he left there at 23.