Duran vs Leonard I

jaymon112 · May 6, 2012

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I wasn't around at the time but what was the general consensus about this fight? Did people think Duran would roll over Leonard or Leonard would dance around roberto and make a fool of him? Or was it even?

Yes this post is in reference to Mayweather vs Pacquiao and the attitudes towards each fighter if that assumption holds water.

Bogotazo · May 6, 2012

I wasn't around myself, but I believe Leonard was a favorite. Something like 2-1.

Hands of Iron · May 6, 2012

Leonard was favored as it was thought Duran didn't carry the same punch up to 147 (he didn't) despite the fact that he put on a masterclass technical performance in against Carlos Palomino a year earlier. Somehow, through revisionist history this has been construed into the story that Leonard "cherry picked" Duran over the harder-punching (WBA Champion) Pepino Cuevas. This is horse****, as Leonard and Cuevas were all set to rumble before Don King bent over his personal ***** Jose Sulaiman to get his Man (Duran) the title shot and the dollars that came with it. You can read all about in Duran's Biography.

What is true is that prior to the fight, Dundee and Leonard were both telling the media that he - and not Duran - was the puncher in the fight. Dundee even predicted Leonard would knock him out within four rounds (Ferdie Pacheco commentary in the first round). For that story, I'll turn it over to Springs Toledo (a.k.a Stonehands89), a contributor on ESB:

http://www.thesweetscience.com/article-archive/2010/7636-the-fifth-god-of-war-roberto-duran

MALICE
By the end of 1979 a clash between Leonard and Duran was almost certain. Duran had already retired former welterweight champion Palomino in a dominant performance, while Leonard stopped Benitez and took his title. They fought separately on the Larry Holmes-Ernie Shavers undercard and Leonard’s trainer Angelo Dundee watched the Duran bout very carefully. “Duran is thought of as a rough guy, but he’s not rough,” he observed, “he’s smart and slick.”

Arcel, 81 and Brown, 73 were watching Leonard as well, though they were very familiar with his style and how to beat it. They had already trained about thirty world champions between them, while the fifty-eight year old Dundee had nine on his resume. In fact, Dundee’s novitiate was at Stillman’s gym where he handed towels to the two masters he now matched wits with.

The posturing began soon enough. At Gleason’s gym, Leonard was watching Duran skip rope when Duran spotted him and began lashing the rope with uncanny speed –while squatting. At a press conference at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, Leonard was cuffed by Duran, who claimed that Leonard put his hand near his face. Two days before the fight, both men were at an indoor mall in Montreal and Duran learned just enough English to yell “two more days! Two more days!” Leonard blew a kiss and Duran charged at him and had to be restrained.

Duran was getting mean, but it was Leonard who had every physical advantage in his favor. He was younger, faster, taller, and bigger. “I’m not Ali,” he insisted to the pundits, “Sure, maybe at the start I was trying to do his shuffle or his rope-a-dope, but not now.” In his last two outings, Duran looked pudgy as he struggled against two comparative novices before stopping them. The previous three welterweights he faced went the full ten rounds. Never before had three opponents in a row gone the distance with him and there was chatter about not only his power at 147 lbs. but his motivation. Duran himself admitted that he was not always committed to training and his trainers did too, though a warning was attached: “When you’re fighting smear cases and you’re the best fighter around, it’s hard to be interested, but now he’s inspired and when he’s inspired, he’s relentless,” Arcel said, “Leonard can’t beat this guy.”

The odds makers disagreed. Duran was a 9-5 underdog.

Leonard was confident enough (and good enough) to ask permission from an aging Sugar Ray Robinson to borrow “Sugar.” But he couldn’t have anticipated how many lumps he’d get from a man who had more in common with fighters from Robinson’s era than he ever would. As Leonard made his way toward the ring on June 20th 1980, Roberto Duran shadow boxed his own demons in the red corner. Both were in the best condition of their lives, but one of them exuded almost preternatural malevolence.

Arcel had already promised that we’d witness “the darndest fight” we’ve “ever seen” –and we did.

Duran had promised to use “old tricks” against Leonard. Old tricks. Freddie Brown’s fingerprints were all over the Duran-Leonard fight. He trained Duran at Grossinger’s Resort in the Catskills, where he worked with Rocky Marciano in the fifties and Joey Archer in the sixties. Brown had more tricks than a cathouse, such as how to hold an opponent in the crook of the arm to stop incoming shots and create the perception that the opponent was doing nothing. Then there was the “Fitzsimmons shift.” Dundee himself might never have heard of it, but he saw it alright: “…if [Duran] missed you with an overhand right,” he observed, “he’d turn southpaw and come back with a left hook to the body.” Duran can be seen executing this against Leonard in the fifth, seventh, and eighth rounds. Bob Fitzsimmons invented it and used it to implode heavyweight champion Gentleman Jim Corbett in 1897. It’s a peach of a move; and it’s older than Ray Arcel himself.

Stone Hands controlled the action in this career-defining bout, but make no mistake, his savvy was no less a deciding factor than his savagery; and the Sugar Man pushed him almost beyond his limits. The crowd was his. Every now and then a thin and solitary Nicaraguan with a mustache could be seen standing up from his seat and waving a little Panamanian flag. It was Alexis Arguello, another fan of the great Duran.

MYTHS
Duran’s strategy was drilled into him. He was instructed to be elusive against the jab, close the distance, crowd Leonard, and hammer the body. Leonard’s aggressive strategy was not expected. It made things more not less difficult to cope with for precisely the reasons that Dundee had alluded to –good little guys don’t beat good big guys. “In this fight, Duran’s not the puncher,” he added, “my guy is.” Their respective knockout percentages over their previous five fights confirmed this: Duran’s was 40%, Leonard’s was 100%. Leonard stated that he planned on “standing and fighting more than expected.” “They all think I’m going to run. I’m not,” he said to New York Magazine, “I’m not changing my style at all… he’ll be beaten to the punch…those are the facts,” he continued, “What’s going to beat Roberto Duran is Sugar Ray Leonard.”

Dundee substantiated this in his autobiography. Leonard’s strategy became certain from the moment that he watched the films and deconstructed Duran’s style. Duran, he said, was a “heel-to-toe guy. He takes two steps to get to you. So the idea was not to give him those two steps, not to move too far away because the more distance you gave him, the more effective he was. What you can’t do in the face of Duran’s aggression was run from it, because then he picks up momentum. My guy wasn’t going to run from him.”
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megavolt · May 6, 2012

http://www.eastsideboxing.com/forum/showthread.php?t=144857

you're welcome :smooch

jaymon112 · May 6, 2012

Thanks for the info. :good

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Duran vs Leonard I

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Duran vs Leonard I

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