Greatest victory of the 4 Kings' fights with each other

Leonard over Hagler for me. I could probably be swayed to say Montreal or Leonard-Hearns 1, but I’ll pick Leonard-Hagler.

I’ll never understand the logic of someone saying “Oh, Leonard just waited until he was old, is all.” That ignores the fact that Leonard hadn’t fought in THREE YEARS before stepping in there. That completely trumps any suggestion of age and wear on Hagler. It’s a nonsensical argument that I dismiss as mere Leonard-hating based on half-truths or supposition.

Give Leonard his due; he earned it. It was a remarkable feat.

 

It really aren’t.

 

Except for the fact that a lot of what I considered to come to that conclusion has nothing to do with where Leonard was in his career in Montreal. Hagler hadn’t happened yet. Hell, Hearns hadn’t happened yet. And he hadn’t bested Roberto in a rematch yet, making him quit.

Likewise, Roberto hadn’t dropped in his career assessment by quitting against Ray, looking awful vs Laing or gotten bombed out by Hearns nor toyed with by Benitez.

When you asked me which was greater, the answer I gave was taking in the meaningful parts of both their entire careers, not a snapshot in time. NOBODY including me, thought Ray was a greater fighter P4P with a greater resume than Duran at the time of their first meeting. Leonard was a shining star on the rise but Roberto was already a legend.

I also don’t consider Roberto a lightweight by the time he fought Ray. He was never going to make that weight again, even if he tried. He had outgrown the division. Fighters generally get bigger as they get older, so this wasn’t a case of too much beer, cake and ice cream.

Duran was a true welterweight by the time he fought Ray. He’d had eight fights over 135 in a row and hadn’t made lightweight in more than two years. Yes, he started his career at a lighter weight and was dominant at 135, but to dismiss him as a lightweight at that point is to thumb one’s nose at all of boxing history, which is replete with fighters moving up to higher divisions when they get older and settle into their bodies.

 

I guess it boils down to this hypothetical: How would the Montreal version of Duran fare against the New Orleans version of Sugar Ray?

And IMHO I STILL think it would be one hell of a war--because Duran was so fanatically focused mentally and physically.

 

I personally don’t cut him any slack — it was his fault and his alone for not training and maintaining himself properly.

However, not cutting him any slack doesn't mean you can just ignore that and treat it like a high-level win, as if he completely bullied and outsmarted a prime Durán — because he wasn’t in his prime.

@Saintpat provided solid argumentation showing that the Durán who fought Leonard wasn’t at his absolute worst. Still, he was clearly out of shape and certainly not prepared to go 15 rounds with what was probably the most motivated version of Leonard we’ve ever seen. That’s why, personally, I rank it as a good win — just not on the same level as the others against the Four Kings. The Montreal/Palomino version of Durán would hve given a tougher, more competitive fight possibly even beating Leonard again.

 

Let’s try this on for size, shall we?

If you dig deep enough, you can get past all the hyperbole and see where Ray Leonard says he didn’t have a good training camp for the first fight.

Now we can take that at face value or not, but if true then that means Duran did not beat the best version of Leonard. Regardless, it’s absolute fact that he chose to trade with Roberto rather than box him like in the second fight.

So why do we not dismiss, or at least devalue some, Duran’s win in the first fight?

But wait, there’s more.

Carlos Eleta claims (cited in the Four Kings book) that Duran entered training camp for Leonard (alas, we don’t have an exact date but the date the fight was announced is known and it’s ridiculous to think that Roberto had no idea a rematch was in the works and Duran himself said in early September that he was already in the gym) at 183 pounds. (At another point, at the time, Eleta said 164 1/2 but that seems sketchy to me.)

Angelo Dundee said, at the time, that Ray weighed 173 when he entered camp. We don’t have an exact date, but three weeks out they say he’s done to 160.

It’s also well documented that Duran really struggled to make weight in the first fight, and he obviously had a masterclass performance in Montreal. Freddie Brown and Ray Arcel both said he had plenty of time to get his weight right for the rematch, that him having to lose a lot of weight in class wasn’t unusual.