Hagler should of been 65-1-1

You know John, There was talk in 1974 about a potential title bout between World Welterweight Champion Jose Mantequilla Napoles and WBA Lightweight Champion Roberto Duran. But Ray Arcel, Freddie Brown and Carlos Eleta were against such a bout. Instead Napoles moved up to challenge World Middleweight Champion Carlos Monzon on Feb 9 1974 in Paris, France. Napoles weighed in something like 153 lbs for that bout. We all know that Napoles lost by TKO 7. I find it very interesting because years later in Nov 1983, Duran moved up to fight Hagler for the World Middleweight title and gave Hagler a very competitive bout but lost on points in 15 rounds.

 

You should maybe try wording it slightly better, for clarity. I still don't agree on the level of COM-PE-TIT-ION being better however.

 

1974, wow what a fight that would have been. Duran probably had it all 100% together in 78 by the time of the last De Jesus fight. Early 74 he was putting De Jesus in his place but was still a bit raw comparative to the later more refined monster. He was already an incredible fighter but he also learnt a lot in the fights he crammed into the next 4 years.

 

In 1974 I used to subscribe to Ring Magazine, watched all of the bouts live on ABC' s Wide World Of Sports. It would have been interesting to see Duran vs Napoles in early 1974 instead of Monzon vs Napoles.

 

I'm not saying Napoles was as effective at Middleweight as Leonard was, but its comparable due to both being ATG Welterweights moving up to Middleweight.

Both Monzon & Hagler have good wins vs fighters moving up in weight Griffith, Napoles, Duran, Hearns, although I would argue Griffith was better at Middleweight than either of them.

But what separates them is I think Monzon beat actual better Middleweights in his reign like Benvenuti, Valdez, along with 14 title defences of course.

 

It's comparable as ATG welters moving up, absolutely, but as you hint yourself they were different levels at that higher weight DP.

I would agree Griffith had better runs on the board resume wise at 160 than all of them....absolutely mate. I think Hearns at the time he fought Hagler was an extremely tough out and he was declined in future bouts at 160. TBH i think Monzon beat some good middles but i think he beat some filler too. Blasphemy but i find Briscoe a little overrated. He was pretty one dimensional for mine. Don't get me wrong - it was a difficult dimension to get over. There was a bit of a contemporary whine in Monzons day that it was a weak era and he had an easy run just like there was Hagler's at times.

I'll re-iterate as well that monzon was performing at an extremely high level when he departed whilst Hagler was struggling.

Having said all that i rank Monzon one place above Hags.

 

You know, Jose Mantequilla Napoles was a very dominant World Welterweight Champion, he had two reigns as champion. Napoles defeated champion Curtis Cokes by TKO 13 to win the title on April 18 1969, he reigned until he was stopped on cuts by Billy Backus in Dec 1970. In June 1971 Napoles regained the title by stopping Backus. Napoles has great victories in title defenses, he defeated challengers Emile Griffith in Oct 1969, had victories over Ernie Red Lopez, (older brother of Danny Little Red Lopez,) Clyde Grey, Ralph Charles, Adolph Pruitt, Hedgemon Lewis, and Armando Muniz. Napoles was stopped by challenger John H. Stracey on Dec 6 1975 in Mexico City, this after decking Stracey in round 1 and breaking Stracey's nose. Napoles only weakness was brittle skin tissue around the eyes.

 

Again, Good Post, I agree. All champions have like you said fillers as challengers.

 

Absolutely. Ironically Tyson had close to the least filler i've ever seen.

 

Agreed. Mike Tyson unified the title beating the likes of Berbick, Smith and Tucker. Tyson's challengers were good too.

 

I agree with everything you said good post.

 

Cheers DP.

 

Yet one of those ‘fillers’ knocked the fillings out of Mike’s teeth in Tokyo, haha.

After that we enter the ‘Filler Era’ of Mike Tyson’s career — a few bites of the sandwich like Ruddock had some meat on the bone, but we also had fragile cruiserweight Henry Tillman, Alex Stewart and of course the Peter McNeeleys and Orlin Norris’ and Frans Bothas and Clifford Ettienes and Lou Savarese.

He increasingly became a sideshow attraction after his prison stint.

 

Post prison was definitely a different matter.