Comparing 'no mas' to Jones v Toney

One guy quit. One didn't.

 

If only boxing didn’t have that stupid rule that makes it illegal to cut the ring off on a guy who is moving ... oh wait, they’re allowed to do that. They just weren’t good enough to do it.

Never mind.

 

Arcel allegedly also said Duran was in better shape than he was prior to the Montreal fight, and would beat Leonard even worse.
Most of what was said after The second fight was indeed excuse making , searching for a reason for Duran quitting in the 2nd fight.
Toney though had more evidence he had major issues prior to the Jones fight. From management issues, to multiple sources of him being severely overweight prior to the fight. Toney also looked soft when he entered the ring against Jones. Depends on what you want to believe.....

 

What was Arcel going to say publicly? What he said behind closed doors was the truth

 

Duran had weight problems throughout his lightweight career. Multiple times they had to bring him down from almost 170 pounds.

 

Never let anyone tell you that you've wasted your life Mark.

 

I think that kind of weight-shedding, over tens of fights and a dozen years, is extra wear and tear, though - and generally detrimental to boxer performance, over time. One can't keep raking that kind of poundage off, without it catching up with you at some point. With age being an added factor, it was only a matter of time before it took it's toll on Duran.

 

I never thought of the fights as being similar. When I think of Jones-Toney, I think of Jones dominating the fight with his speed and skills. Toney was never really in the fight, which is a testament to Jones' phenomenal ability.

By contrast, I thought Leonard-Duran II was competitive. Duran won some rounds although Leonard seemed slightly ahead. In the last couple rounds before Duran quit, Leonard certainly had his confidence up. He may have been able to pull away, but Duran's quitting robbed us of finding out.

 

The most similar thing was the aftermath of Duran and Toney’s careers.

 

I’ll go with what people were saying before the fight — when there are no excuses to be made, no outcome to retrofit the discussion to — than what they said after.

There’s other threads where this is spelled out with articles from the time and it’s clear the idea that Duran blew up to 200 pounds (find me one witness who saw him step on a scale and top 180 ... there aren’t any) after the fight and shrunk down to 147 just can’t be true.

The fights were 5 months apart. The negotiations were done in September. They made a formal announcement at the start of October while the boxing press was assembled for the Holmes-Ali fight.

Keep in mind that up until an excuse was needed, the book on Duran was ‘get him back in the ring as quickly as possible.’ After he quit, it became ‘Duran needs far more time to prepare for a fight.’ This was his longest layoff in years so he had plenty of time to get ready. If they had set the fight for February instead of November, he probably would have gotten up to 200-plus pounds ... the longer they waited the more he was going to party.

Fact is, they took the Leonard rematch with the guaranteed $7M purse because Duran’s camp was afraid that if he took an interim defense he’d show up looking like he did against Zefirino Gonzalez (or, later, Kirkland Laing) and blow it by getting beat by some nobody in a stay-busy defense.

And all that really matters is that Duran was a professional prizefighter and a world champ. If he didn’t do what it took to prepare himself for a major fight with the biggest purse of his entire life, that’s entirely on him.

You fight the guy in front of you. It’s not your job to get them in shape. Leonard and Roy Jones Jr did what professionals do and prepared themselves. It’s like Ali said, the fight is won far from the limelight, in the gym working every day to prepare. If Toney and Duran didn’t conduct themselves like professionals, that’s a mark against them and not their opponents.

This much is true in all sports across all time: Winners adjust; losers make excuses.

 

That would be open to discussion in some ways, maybe. Probably (definitely to many) his greatest ever lightweight performance came in his last ever fight at 135.

2 1/2 years we saw what almost all rate as his greatest ever win against Leonard.

3 years later he turned back the clock and pummeled Davey Moore. He backed this up with a fine effort against Hagler.

5 years later he put worth an amazing effort to dethrone Iran Barkley.

Some are quite fond of some of his efforts well after Barkley too.

In short there's no identifiable line where his performances fell over the edge or even tapered off evenly.