Leonard was 35 YEARS OLD,GET IT ? HE WAS GONE! All your posts consist of is glorifying Norris and keeping his arse clean with your lips.So lets look at him.Norris feasted on 2nd and 3rd raters when champion,the better guys like Brown held him even koing him brutally in their first fight ,before being out boxed in the return.Blocker was past his best and had been kod by Honeyghan years before.Taylor was never the same after Chavez and was not a LM.MUgabi was going through the motions after being kod by Hagler.Jackson demolished Norris ,Norris would not go in the same room as McCallum.Summing up Norris lot 9 times in56 fights and not just to top raters his losses over Boudouani,Rosenblatt and Mullings hurt his record,and his biggest wins were over past prime fighters.NOW if you want to talk about Norris any more .PUT A POST UP ,and leave this thread for a discussion about the respective merits of Hearns and Leonard.You are the Forum's clown.
It is a silly argument. Leonard was old, inactive and got whipped but showed tremendous heart going the distance as Norris pounded him far worse than Paq did to Oscar ...In their primes Leonard KO's Norris in three or four .. Norris was a great offensive fighter with a very suspect chin ...
just because you're 34 doesnt mean you're gone. Very famous fighters Hopkins, Johnson, Foreman, Moore, Walcott, Fitzsimmons, Tiger to name just a few, went well beyond this age and did very well, bringing home more championships. That's what Leonard had been doing; winning championships. It all depends really on who's in front of you. If you face the wrong guy, then your time is up as what happened to Leonard with Norris. Norris beat Leonard at a time when he accomplished the most, was at his most experienced and in his last fight, "fought the perfect fight" according to Steve Farhood and Tim Ryan. He was highly favored to win and hadnt lost a fight in 11 years. He had just won his fifth championship and Norris beat the pants off him. Ray tried to knock him out but quickly found out that he is not Julian Jackson. Jackson had power to spare, a true knockout artist while Ray Leonard HAS to outbox you if he is to have any chance. This is very hard for people to swallow, that Leonard with all his championships and expereince hadn't the first clue how to deal with someone faster than himself. He didnt have the asnwers to dealing with the speed, reflexes of Norris. He didnt know how to cope with an athlete possessing super sharp reflexes. He mistakenly believed he had the right mix of athleticism and experience to defeat Norris. Norris was just too slick and too quick for Ray to lay a glove on him. Go to round 6 Mcvey to see what I'm talking about. Ray tries to land one of his haymakers but Terry ducks under. As Leonard breaks, Terry drives thru a punishing left to the ribs. It happend so fast Ray didnt rralize it happened until after he was struck. You can hear the commentator say "sounded like he hit a bass drum". Terry Leonard had never faced a well balanced athlete like Norris in his life-not with this kind of speed. Round 7 was even better! Terry lured him to the ropes and toyed with him there too like Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote, jabbing him off the ropes and just when Ray THOUGHT he had him measured for a big right hand but wound up on the canvas himself, seeing stars Leonard was great though like you said. he kept coming forward trying to land that one punch that would turn things around, and Terry just kept giving it to him. Leonard showed the heart he'd alwasy been known for and didnt show he'd been demorealized until well into the tenth round. What incredible heart! It was a great victory for Terry, one that Ray Robinson would have been proud of. I actually knew Terry had it in the bag at the stare down when Ray refused to look him in the eye. Terry you could tell, had ice in his viens. He did the impossible, taking a legend and making him look like the novice.
Didn't know how to deal with an athlete possessing super sharp reflexes? How about Hearns and Benitez? The fighters you mentioned as examples of aging successful boxers were men who had kept active.You keep repeating Tim Ryan and Steve Farhood's comment like a mantra.Leonard beat a fat disinterested Duran in his previous fight .If Norris was so great how come he got beat by 2nd raters?ANd he was IN HIS PRIME.
I said super sharp not average. Wilfred came nowhere close to Terry in reflexes. Whn did you ever see Wilfred deliver a hook with the kind of snap Terry used on Mugabi? He ruined him. Wilfred doesnt even fight like Terry! he doesnt put pressure on a guy like Terry, he doesnt try to hurt a guy. That's where Terry won the fight-he HURT leonard and took his heart away. He pounded the head and Ray felt his guts turn to jelly. The mental fight had been won in the third and Terry just used his speed to pull further and further ahead on the cards. If I had to compare this fight to a big football game I would compare it to superbowl 27 in which you have the young inexperienced upstarts against the more experienced in the big game. And it too turned into the big blowout. I love these types of contests. it gives a clear show of superiority. You dont have to try to guess the winner like hagler-Leonard; you already know! I really believe the reason people belittle Terry is because of how he humbled Ray. I always knew this was the perfect kind of opponent to do the job; fast, sharp puncher, athletic, mean, black, good all around defense, and fearless. Terry had no fear of Leonard even at the stare down, which he also won. Leonard was every bit as great as some say he is. He beat Duran in his last fight that described by both Farhood and Ryan as the perfect fight. Everyone knows you cant fight the perfect fight if you're gone. Duran had just beat Barkley but Leonard was a different story. Leonard was to Duran what Norris was to Leonard.
I think you can argue Hearns is greater than Ray, but the problem is that Hearns lost his two biggest fights by knockout loss. Hearns won 3 of his titles from Cueves,Benitez and Hill. 3 HOF fighters. He beat and knocked out Duran when Duran was champion. He was the first man to win titles in 4 and later 5 divisions. He was the first welterweight to win the light heavyweight title -2 times. He later won a lesser version of the cruiserweight title. I think the win over Virgil Hill should have meant more for his career than it did. Fact is that when he lost his two biggest fights to Ray and Marvin, his career rightly or not was rated by those fights- as great as those fights were.