Iran Barkley ring weight

He was 226lbs vs Duran

 

BI: Which fights in your career do you feel you were at your very best?

Iran Barkley: “All of them. I must say all of them. From when I was coming up, I was at my best in all of ‘em. I put my heart all the way into it. All the way until the end.”

BI: Your fights with Thomas Hearns were amazing. He’s an all-time great, you were the decided underdog, but you bested him not once but twice. What do you remember from those fights?

Iran Barkley “I remember the first time everybody was saying that he was gonna beat me. I knew he was a good fighter and everything. But that didn’t matter, I was determined. I knew that I was gonna beat him. And I knew how I was gonna beat him. And the only way was to beat him impressive. I knew I had to make a statement.”

BI: What was your gameplan? Why did you know you could beat him, I mean, that was Thomas “The Hitman” Hearns.”

Iran Barkley “Well, true it was Thomas Hearns. But I waited my whole life to do that. I looked to fight all the great ones. My strategy was just to go in there and take him out.”

BI: Was there a moment in that fight when you saw in him that he realized what he was in for? That defeat was inevitable?

Iran Barkley: “Definitely. Like in the second round. When I jumped on him and got serious about doing what I was gonna do, instead of boxing him, after I got all cut up. He knew how hard it was gonna be for him. He knew he was in for a rude awakening.”

BI: Did he praise you after the fight?

Iran Barkley: “Well, you know, Tommy said to me, ‘Good fight.’ It wasn’t much that he would say. They’d just carried him out.”

BI: Have you seen him lately?

Iran Barkley: “I’ve seen him once or twice. We speak but he still’s got that driving energy that he still got to beat me [smiles].”

BI: Would you say Hearns was your toughest opponent?

Iran Barkley: “The toughest I had to fight? I would say Duran was like the toughest. Because I had to stay smart, to be smart to compete with him. You had to always keep your eyes opened with him. You never knew with Duran, he could be so crafty. He wasn’t that powerful a puncher but he was powerful enough to hang in. I was so much bigger than him you see but that crazy son of a ***** still gave me everything I could handle and some”

BI: You say you were much bigger than him? You were known for cutting a lot of weight. How much did you used to cut back then when you campaigned at middleweight?

Iran Barkley: ''Making weight was sheer torture for me. Man that was tough. I used to have to come down from like 235-240 and then eat like a horse nonstop after the weigh in to put it all back on. I weighed 226 for the Duran fight.''

BI: Was there one fight you really wanted but never got?

Iran Barkley “I wanted Sugar Ray Leonard in the 80’s and 90’s. But Ray didn’t want to fight me. Ray was like, man, I’m not looking for that kind of fight. Iran, you hit too hard. He told me that at Top Rank Gym.”

BI: Gil Clancy once said about you that he never saw a fighter achieve so much with so little natural talent. What do you think of that comment?

Iran Barkley: “That was a good comment because that’s true [laughs]. I never got all the recognition that I deserved to get for beating everybody. He said that I didn’t have much talent but I do got talent. I even got things that Gil Clancy never knew that I had [laughs]. You know what I’m saying. He can’t really say that because I’ve been trained by the best (Connie Bryant, Davey Vazquez, Bobby Miles). I fought the best.”