How good was Duran - P4P GOAT?

No, not at all, that came out wrong actually. I just wanted to reassure you I wasn't stalking you or anything. :good

 

No worries man. :good

 

Ray Robinson was a kid when he was 135. If you take a look at the trend of his weight, you see that he could not maintain the LW limit for long because he was growing out of it. The LW limit is not below 140. The Servo fights were not LW bouts. Your argument clearly implies that Robinson was a better resume at LW than Duran -that is wrong.

To write off Barkley as "unskilled" and use the Benn fight as a measure is simply insufficient.

Barkley was a huge, big punching MW who had serious endurance and also had Hearns' number. Whitaker, Mayweather, Benny, Shane, Oscar, Napoles, and ARmstrong would have been physically overwhelmed by him in 1989. The Barkley who fought Duran was working behind a jab, showed an excellent body of work to the body, used angles, and was dangerous. Period. I don't believe for a moment that he was ever the same after that fight, but still managed to take two more titles against Van Horn and then the LHW against Hearns.

 

Where are you going with this... Will you assert that Duran was actually a natural MW? Come on.

 

Iran Barkley would walk through Mayweather -- he walked through Hearns, and Duran had to box him. I don't see Mayweather taking the kind of punishment Roberto did and staying level.

 

Tho i'm not saying Barkley couldn't go at Mayweather i'd hardly say he walked thru Hearns. Truth be told Hearns flogged the living **** out of him until all but the very end. He walked into leather is what he did. In the rematch he got thru Hearns offense quite easily, which certainly showed Tommy to be over the hill, no pun intended.

 

Hearns was still pretty dangerous for Barkley II... I suspect that Barkley had the necessary tools to defeat Hearns most of the time --he was Hagleresque in that he was physically very strong, durable, good chin, and hit hard.

But no, no one walks through Hearns.

 

I find it puzzling that a guy that DOMINATED his natural division for seven years then went up TWO divisions to defeat the top 3 atg welter champ (no1 welter of all time in my book.) as well as a great champ in palamino,and at the time of the second leonard fight had something like one loss in 70 odd contests (avenged twice emphatically.) with 50 odd stoppages AND stylistically LOOKED and fought great is not in the mix in the top 5 p4p atgs in the book of some....Never mind the fact that there is almost universal consensus between old timers and modern folks that roberto is THE no1 lightweight in history....
After this we see the man competing with one of the greatest middleweights of all times over 15 tough rounds and finally beating a rugged strong huge natural world middleweight champ in his 37th year and 21 years after his pro debut....All this while being in essence a natural lightweight/lt welter,with a 67 inch reach and 5 ft 7 in height...
We must consider this guy a fistic phenomenon,he achieved things that no other fighter could have done,not whitaker,armstrong or robinson...
For these feats i consider roberto as being the greatest gloved fighter of them all in a p4p sense.....

 

What amuses me here is the people who may think that Esteban or Kenny couldn't have easily dominated the lightweight division in Whitaker's era.

 

Fair enough, but i was surprised at the fact Hearns couldn't keep Barkley off him at all in the rematch. This was in stark contrast for most of the original. I know he'd just come off a sensational performance vs Hill but i knew Tommy was done after seeing the rematch. He was getting well on tho and had many years and fights behind him, some quite gruelling.

 

I'd add Nelson too, though I'd favour Ken and Esteban over him.

 

Probably because Azumah did next to diddly squat at lightweight.

 

I'm talking about swapping Pernell for one or both of the two. And I don't recall Whitaker fighting Chavez at 135, although I do recall him signing not to fight him at lightweight.

 

Probably becuase Azumah ran into one of the greatest fighters of all time on their best night at lightweight.

 

...just like Kenny Buchanan did. Big difference being Ken beat two all-time great lightweights in Laguna and Ortiz.