How highly do you rank Roberto Duran as a welterweight?

20th best win atsch

 

Gans was more of an outside fighter, Duran was an infighter, less likely to be caught by something big. Even if you consider the McGovern loss legit, it wasn't anything similar to Duran's loss to Hearns, and yes, Gans fought plenty of welterweights and some middleweights.

Roy Jones has nothing to do with this thread, really. Barkley certainly wouldn't be anywhere close to top 10 wins for him. It would be on the level of a victory over Richard Hall, doesn't matter the titles Barkley got by beating Hearns. I'd pick half of Jones' lhw opponents beat Barkley easily, he was that poor.

 

That isn't my point at all. I'm disagreeing with you that there are many Welters that would spark Duran?

 

Richard Hall :-( Don't be childish.

Are slick stylists the only fighters that are any good? You seem to downgrade 'sluggers' big time I.e 'Fullmer was mediocre' clearly in terms of ability he and Barkley weren't all that but that's not the be all and end all is it?

Both still better than Ruiz, but I do agree that it's gone off on a bit of a tangent and for that I apologise.

 

Duran was vulnerable to hard punchers with boxing skills. I'm pretty sure you can find plenty of such in welterweight history. Before somebody says Hagler tested him, Marvin had average punching power and not sharp enough to be a KO artist, and he showed too much respect to Duran.

 

My fault. All due apologizes.

And of course its important to have differing viewpoints as they help foster debate and make us reassess our preconceived notions in addition to fueling a spirit of comradery and fraternalism.

Plus we can all agree that Tommy Hearns could have stopped Duran at 147.

 

Great. Based more on his h2h ability than anything else. He beat a great version of ray Leonard and looked brilliant doing it. The way he looked against palomino and Leonard tells me he's probably a top ten ww h2h speaking.

I love it when people pick Tommy Ryan to beat him, the evidence is wholly lacking.

 

I would agree with all of this but wouldn't say that means there are many WWs that would spark him.

Still, Fully Obel II :yep

 

Let me ask you, next-day reports for how many Tommy Ryan's fights have you seen? Or the between-the-fight writeups by people like Macon, Right Cross (Armstrong), Mathison, Floto, Griswold, Left Cross, O'Hara, Siler, Mack, etc?

 

I've read plenty on Ryan. He's the first greatbeelterweight in history. He set the bar in the division.

However I don't see how anyone can pick against Duran in favour of a man they've never seen fight.

 

I don't like non-footage based predictions anyway, unless it's an obvious styles thing. Here, it isn't. Picking him to beat Duran by K.O outright would not be a pick I'm comfortable with. Senya, if you've read enough on him to think it's feasible, go right ahead mate, I can't really challenge you on it mate.

Hey, I read your site man. If there's any more you wanna' share, please do.

 

Not as many as you.

 

If he'd knocked Duran out with one of those shots I'd undoubtedly give a lot of Welters a better chance regardless if his career went on exactly as it did.

Not even the level of Welters that Senya is making the case for.

 

Can I see either of those guys beating Duran? Yes.

It was the way it was thrown around that I object to. It wouldn't be a given.

Anyway, Senya needs to be in this thread now and he's not :bart I want his info' :deal

 

The thing about DeJesus was in that even a prime Duran could be caught and put down, his defense had enough flaws and his chin was solid, but not to the point where he could take it from the hardest hitters of welterweight division. To think that only two persons in history had the power and the skills to deliver it is silly.

You want info? Sorry, but I've been putting hundreds of hours just retyping things for my scrap-books on old-timers, not to mention the thousands of hours I've spent searching and saving the clippings. I'm only giving out a sample of what I have.

P.S. Many other historians do the same thing, collecting the clippings in scrap-books, I'm not trying to be special in this regard. The thing that saddens me, though, that when it comes to IBRO journal, for example, they mostly only want to share the NY Times articles, like that newspaper is the only one out there.