Not the Montreal Duran vs the Marlon of the Honeyghan/Brown fights (or any other performance you feel is his best), but rather at a different weight; being middleweight. There was supposedly an inclination from starling that should he have beaten Nunn, he wanted to unfiny with the then still WBC champ, Roberto Duran. This didn't happen, obviously. But I think it would've been a nice unification fight between the IBF and WBC. The time window was short, given that Jackson won the vacant WBC vs Graham about six months after Nunn vs Starling, and obviously Starling lost. But in this alternate world where I say Starling vs Duran does happen, for the unified title, who do you think woulda won? Duran from the Barkley fight, or Starling from the Nunn fight? Starling was 31, but pushed Nunn quite a bit - more than most did before Nunn fought Toney - and Duran was 37, but had just beaten Iran Barkley.
At middleweight, I think Duran's biggest weakness (aside from being tiny, which wouldn't come into play here vs somebody not all too much bigger than him), is that he couldn't maintain a pace if it was enforced on him. But that wouldn't matter here, since Starling was almost as happy to wait as Duran was. Duran should be able to find his range with his punches, and mangle that high-guard with his Jack Johnson uppercut and working some short body hooks. Starling's guard, skills and adaptation provides a challenge which Barkley didn't. By no means an easy task, but I think Duran wins this fairly convincingly.
I agree with that. I doubt Starling is going to move around much at 160 so this could become an infighting type fight and that ain't good for Starling.....
