Is it Possible we Overrate Duran?

Terribly overrated. Honestly mag is closer to rating his actual merit than most.

 

IMO, not overrated in any way, shape, or form. One of the greatest fighters ever to step thru the ropes.

 

I think you should just watch him and judge for yourself. Certainly the boxing experts on IBRO think he's something special (they have him 7th all time),

http://www.ibroresearch.com/?p=463


as do Angelo Dundee, Arcel, Gil Clancy, just to name a few of the legendary boxing coaches who praise Duran.

The problem, if there is one, is that his peaks and valley's greatly exceeded most. So if you focus on his valley's you're going to say he's over rated.

 

Seriously Sal?

if i had a pound for every contentious Duran thread on ESB since the mid-00s i'd be a ****ing millionaire.He's one of the more divisive all-time greats for sure.

 

i don't see duran as widley called greatest lw tbh, the top 4 there are ranked pretty consistently but within the 4 there is little consensus.

inconsistent- yes, largely because of being a poor trainer - yes

lw comp, not sure i can **** on it much tbh, beyond those 2 there is a variety of styles. Was eleta overcautious and greedy? yes, but what names is he actually missing from the era? laguna maybe, but that fight made no real sense.

moore - tested once, above average (at time of fight) could use moore's later record to discredit the win but ive never seen it done, and with a reason but maybe?
barkley - average skills but above average fighter and not untested

The beauty of duran is he fits both molds of great fighters, long reigning 1 weight champ, and successful above natural weight, not many got both sides. My biggest problem with duran is him turning up out of shape and lazylly (spelt so wrong the spellcheck is no help) relying on diuretics to make weight, without that he might be my ultimate h2h fighter and would be a shoe in for p4p >#5.

Having written that I could make a better case for him being generally underrated than over, which is a little suprising, but poking bears often is.

 

fair enough, i was away a while, that is overating him at lw(or underrating gans leaonard and whitaker).

 

Well I think members of the IBRO do exactly what we do. We watch fights, look at the good and the bad and assess what we see. As mentioned, Duran had more peaks and valley's than damn near any fighter who fought over the last several decades, so it depends on your focus. If you view the losses against SRL, Benitez and Laing to indicate he couldn't win against good boxers your conclusion will be different than if think he never trained properly for the SRL rematch and went into a slump afterwards.

But either way, it's pretty hard to watch the second two De Jesus fights, the first fight against SRL the fights at lightweight, and not conclude that at his peak he was one of the best ever.

 

I'd say Whitaker has surpassed Duran over the years as the "modern" lightweight\p4p great that people get more angry with if criticised.

More of a "sacred cow" nowadays.

Duran has always seemed more a fighter for the maniacs and trolls to argue over, like Ray Leonard.Often hard to even get a good discussion going, so in that sense he's surely been overestimated by some, but he's never been one without his share of detractors imo.

Robinson and to a lesser extent some of the heavies like Louis, Marciano etc are probably the biggest sacred cow fighters that we have a lot of footage of imo.That are widely debated on anyway.

 

As long as he is not rated above Greb, Robinson and Langford, it is not possible that he has been overrated. Not saying he is #4 but after those at least the arguments can begin to be made.