Duran's Lightweight Status Is Overblown

For those of you that saw red when seeing the title, I'm not hating on Duran. He's actually my favourite fighter and my choice for the most skilled and smartest fighter ever, I don't think it's even that close. However, when it comes to his standing at Lightweight in particular ? Yeah, it's overblown and often goes unquestioned because criticising Duran for a lack of comparative greatness is not something the echo chambers (here or anywhere else, really) like. If you think this is not a case of echo chambers because a few posters like to make fun of No Mas or some of his main losses to belittle his P4P standing, you don't know what you're talking about.

He's simply not in the rite of passage of ''shitting on popular mainstream fighters after you realise their greatness is overblown and escape the curse of being a casual'' group like Marciano, Mayweather and Tyson are, you know ? The cool kids give them ****, you could say the most ******ed things about them and only a select few are gonna give you flack, and the majority of people (or posters in this case) are gonna treat you like you're still one of the homies.

But you're not a cool kid if you criticise Duran's standing in his primary division, you're gonna get a multiple page thread about people giving you single sentance long answers about why you're wrong and stupid (Bet it's gonna happen here) and it's gonna get like 30 likes. So let's at least properly bust the myth before that happens.

Duran's Lightweight resume:

1-0 vs Ken Buchanan
2-1 vs Esteban De Jesus
1-0 vs Guts Ishimatsu
1-0 vs Hiroshi Kobayashi
1-0 vs Vilomar Fernandez
1-0 vs Ray Lampkin
1-0 vs Lou Bizzaro
1-0 vs Leoncio Ortiz
1-0 vs Masataka Takayama
1-0 vs Alvaro Rojas
1-0 vs Edwin Viruet
1-0 vs Hector Thompson
1-0 vs Jimmy Robertson

Wow that's actually a pretty good list of Lightweight wi- no it's not. I just listed a bunch of names, don't pretend it means anything.

Bizzaro: Not a LW contender, but a Junior Welterweight contender, a very repleceable one at that.

Thompson: Also a 140 contender, only moving down to fight Duran with no LW resume to speak of by that point (he had one win over Jimmy Heair later). Admittedly a very good and underrated contender with half a dozen or so noteworthy wins at 140. He did enhance Duran's resume in a P4P sense. But at Lightweight ? Nah.

Kobayashi: Literally moved up for his only fight at 135 and retired, he was a 130 lber throughout his entire career.

Rojas: Did **** all to deserve to belong in the same Ring as Duran. Not only was he unranked and not a contender, calling him an actual journeyman in the proper sense of the word is appropriate. Absolutely disgusting for a title defence.

Takayama: Not as bad as Rojas, but also wasn't ranked and did **** all to deserve the shot, his best feat being managing a draw with Guts Ishimatsu years before.

Ortiz: Only noteworthy win is his victory over Brooks, who was indeed a LW at the time, but was still a prospect and only established himself at 140. Ranked at 140 despite primarily fighting as a Lightweight too, Idk what's going on there.

Viruet: Only thing he did in his career is beating Vilomar Fernandez. Fernandez was a good fighter so it's a solid win, but nothing special. His struggles and close wins vs far lesser fighters prove that.

Robertson: Same, but with a draw over Ramos instead and MD over Ruben Navaro. Navaro. I'd bet money 99% of the people reading this don't even know that name.

Lampkin: Somehow ranked as the #1 Lightweight contender for a while, but literally beat no one. You know how we say Wilder beat no one ? Yeah, now get Wilder's WBC belt and wins over Ortiz, Stiverne and Breazeale out of the picture. That's Lampkin. Not exaggarating.

So what are we left with ? The wins over Buchanan, De Jesus x2, Ishimatsu and Fernandez. The 3 wins over Buchanan and De Jesus are ATG stuff for sure. Ishimatsu's victories over a declining Buchanan and Gonzalez x2 put him in solid champ category, and Fernandez catching lighting in a bottle with Arguello certainly helps his case. But that's that.

Is this really a top 3 or even GOAT worthy resume for literally the deepest, most rich, and talent heavy division in history ? I'm not even gonna bring up Leonard and Gans, those are to be expected.

What's he got over a guy like Carlos Ortiz ? Who is:

2-1 vs Ismael Laguna
2-0 vs Sugar Ramos
1-0 vs Dave Charnley
1-0 vs Joe Brown
1-1 vs Kenny Lane
1-0 vs Flash Elorde
1-0 vs Teruo Kosaka
1-0 vs Douglas Vaillant
1-0 vs Maurice Cullen

That is a clearly superior resume to Duran's. Brown and Laguna are comparable to Buchanan and De Jesus if not better, and the rest of the contenders are classes superior to Duran's. Tony Canzoneri and Ike Williams similarly have superior accomplishments at the weight. Maybe Packey McFarland too if you ignore his lack of a title, those wins over Welsh trump Duran's best.

 

Not really. At that point both were exclusively ranked at Lightweight, and them weighing 137 and 138 makes the bout seem closer to being an over the 135 limit bout, rather than a full on 140 contest. It's happened a ton of times in history. It's like Robinson weighing 151 vs Gavilan's 149 in their first fight. It wasn't and still isn't treated as a Middleweight bout.

Besides, undefeated doesn't mean he's automatically top 3 or the GOAT. Buchanan, De Jesus x2, Ishimatsu and Fernandez just ain't cutting it.

 

That's a good dark horse to have, I'm tired of seeing Whitaker still being treated as some sort of hot take

Also here's probably another hot-ish take. You know how everyone says Duran was very inconsistent after he moved up, right ? That he was a dominant force who just destroyed people at Lightweight ? I disagree with that as well. He was always inconsistent after getting the title and before moving up in 78', he was just consistent enough to win (most of his opposition just being plain bad helped). There are bouts where he looks like a genuine H2H beast (De Jesus 3, Ortiz, Thompson) and then some where he looks like he forgot half of his tricks (Bizzaro despite the KO, Lampkin, Viruet). It's weird. Iirc he was lucky to get a win and not a draw vs Hector Matta, I think it was.

I think he actually peaked when he left Lightweight, with performances like Brooks, Palomino, Leonard (and De Jesus 3 ofc) very close to each other and officially fell off after No Mas. I think he might legitimately be the best fighter ever from 78-80. But he surprsingly looked every bit as good vs Cuevas and Moore as he did for his best LW performances too. Less athletic and a lesser physical force, but his craft was very evident vs both and he seemed like a more crafty and surgical operator.

 

Napoles is awesome. He's probably in my top 5 fighters ever, both in overall ability and as a favourite. But he's not more skilled than Duran, overall. His game is awesome, especially his ring cutting, his use of half steps and combinations. I can give Napoles the edge there, even in ring cutting which is one of Duran's main points.

But Napoles simply doesn't have Duran's inside game, which is the main difference between the 2. It's been talked about a lot, but it's still analysed far less than it should be, simply due to how subtle and hard to pick up on it is. Duran does some insanely genius **** in there. Watched the Palomino fight the other day. Crazy ******* uses an overhook to stop Carlos from throwing, then steps backwards, hands still close to Carlos, just in the right distance to bait him to throw hooks and uppercut in order for him to get his hands in an underhook/inside position to get in his preferred inside position.

At one point in round 2 when he's got his back on the ropes, he almost exclusively uses left body hooks and right uppercuts to the head, knowing that Palomino senses a lack of touch and sees the same motion (that slightly lean and dip to the left before throwing the body hook looks the same as when you shift your weight from your back foot to your front foot with the right uppercut) and poor Palomino is left clueless.

Napoles is the ****ing man, but he just doesn't do stuff like this.

 

Nah, I very much doubt he could do that, if he could've, he would've. There simply isn't a better way to things on the inside than how Duran does them when it comes to pure skill. Maybe you could argue some S+++ pressure demon like Armstrong was the better overall operator on the inside due to his relentlessness, but if you're a technican like Duran and Napoles, there's no getting better than that.

It's not like Napoles never found himself in need of fighting inside, he simply did not do the stuff Duran did because he couldn't. You think the Clyde Gray fight couldn't have been less frustrating for him if he could do what Duran did on the inside and with such frequency ? And I absolutely agree that Napoles' movement is Godly (genuinely the smoothest looking fighter ever), he wasn't called Mantequilla for nothing. That's not what Boxing skill is entirely comprised of though. Did Napoles ever win entire rounds with his back on the ropes ? He never did that. Is he inherently inferior due to that ?