Canelo / GGG proved that you can still rob a guy that lands more punches if you're flashy enough and have a story to tell.
It was a very close fight.I just gave it to Leonard,but it could equally have gone the other way .Contests that close can't be classified as robberies,imo
Punches landed is only part of the judging Ring generalship Harder punches etc... Judge preference in style (bias) Judges angle to the action What SRL understood and every other fighter started to be trained to do is if you control the last 30 seconds of every round the judges would forget the first 2 and a half. Hagler did nothing flashy he was a Frazier type consistent honest workman and this attitude worked against him against a master showman like SRL FYI I felt Hagler eeked it out but SRL's social IQ won him the fight....and Hagler knew it...he should have been in a seek and destroy mode SRL could not have gone 12 rds with MMH with that pressure
Agreed Canelo's judges are an Institutional support mechanism SRL was smarter at understanding people, styles, judges etc....strategy
If you're going by that, then you'd have to look at the round by round breakdown, but even that isn't that meaningfull, if you don't categorise the punches. That said I think Hagler deserved to edge it.
You shouldn't take counts like these on face value. Already in the first round I saw they counted three punches from Hagler that was just arm punches in a clinch. I don't score punches like that and nor do judges in most cases.
Who overrates Leonard at middleweight? He had one fight there - against Hagler. And he won. Are you just arguing that Hagler won the fight? If so, please get in line with every other apologist for Hagler’s poor performance in that fight. I had Leonard winning 115-113 and if I rescored it tomorrow, I don’t think I’d have Hagler ahead. He sleepwalked his way through much of the first half of the fight. He came on over the second half but Leonard did enough to pinch a round or two there. Punches landed doesn’t trump everything. I just watched Toney-McCallum 1. McCallum landed a higher percentage of punches and more overall than Toney, but I had Toney ahead at the end as the quality of his punches was better. Look, I like Hagler and have all the respect in the world for his championship reign but he made grave tactical errors before and during the fight that contributed to him losing, regardless of what the punch stats say. He fought a poor fight imo.
