is Roberto Duran overrated??

just edited

 

The Duran excuses are more legit for Duran fans than for people who are objective. Any loss can have an excuse. But a loss to every great he fought and then an excuse? There was a pattern. He fought greats and he lost (sometimes easily) and he made an excuse and his fans bought it. Going to my favorite fighter Hearns. I never bought into the excuse that Tommy got a leg message and his legs were gone with Hagler or that he came in light against Ray. Or that he took Barkley for granted. He lost those 3 fights fair. Tommy could have won those fights and we would have never heard about those excuses, same with Duran had he won those fights. The excuses do not mean anything.

 

When it mattered and the belt was on the line... he won and it wasn't that hard either..

 

I'm pretty much the least biased poster on these boards and I rate duran as tenth p4p and first lw.

His run at lightweight is legendary. His victory over leonard is supreme. His loss to leonard is inexcuseable. Above ww i'd say he wasn't great. Yes if beat moore and barkley but he also lost simms, laing, benitez and hearns. For a natural lightweight his exploits look great at the higher weights but his inconsistency puts a ceiling on how high he can be ranked for me.

Still tenth of all time is pretty fukin good. He is just above gans who was almost as great bar the victories at mw.

 

The problem is, with Duran his losses came AFTER he moved up in weight to divisions which were beyond his best weight and even beyond his best years. You can't say the same about Hearns..

 

Oh, wow. That's great. I read all of it.

 

I'm quite comfortable with doing the excuses thing with my favourite fighters. I mean, Barrera only lost to Junior Jones because someone threatened to kidknapp his niece ahead of his fight. It was probably an old ghetto friend of Junior Jones'. Likewise, the Filipino would have been disposed of in double quick time had it not been for those awful, life-threatening forest fires in Big Bear. Seems like too much of a coincidence. I bet Manny had that Bubba guy light the match. He was pretty much shot for every other defeat, and we all know he got robbed in 2000 against Erik. Just sayin'.

...Am I fooling anyone...or..?

 

Overrrated? absolutely not.

Duran may just be the most complete, well balanced in terms of offense and defence and natural fighter i've ever seen. He was ridiculous.

 

His bowel habits were ridiculous.

 

agree. but given all that, the losses to simms and laing are even more unforgiveable

 

Duran fought the best fighters he ever fought when he moved up so naturally he was going to lose those fight. He never had a fellow great at lightweight like Leonard and Hearns did. Hearns always had the best fighters to fight in all divisions and he did well in most of them. Leonard and Hagler were the exceptions. And I do not think 147 was too high in weight for Duran. He was fighting tuneups at 154 as early as 1978, before Hearns.Benitez.or Leonard did. And I do not think Duran's lightweight competition was great enough where that warrants him 1-10 ATG consideration. That is what I have been saying all along. What does his lightweight reign give him as ATG, and then the Leonard win if you take into consideration that he lost to Leonard the next 2 times he fought him. Certainly losing to Benitez,Hearns and Hagler and beating Moore and Barkley do not get him that much on the ATG rating.

 

Overrated?
In terms of actual accomplishments, no he's not. In terms of H2H fantasy matchups at 154 and above, definitely.

 

Roberto Duran has fought great opposition during his time before he moved up beyond lightweight.

He beat the great Ernesto Marcel in the featherweight division. Ernesto Marcel had a great career - defending the WBA featherweight title against the likes of the great hall of famer Alexis Arguello before retiring, the dominant Puerto Rican legend by the name of Samuel Serrano as well as solid fighters who defended their titles a few times i.e Antonio Gomez who had a great record of 43-7 and beat the likes of arguably the greatest light-welterweights of all time, Antonio Cervantes, and defended his WBA featherweight title twice.

No one can deny the sheer dominance of Hiroshi Kobayashi in super featherweight who moved up to lightweight to face Duran. Duran won himself the KO victory. The only criticism that one can pin on Duran in this fight is that Koyabashi was weakened slightly by moving up in weight. Nevertheless, against such great opposition, it's still a good win.

Duran had only just turned 21 when he beat the legendary hall of famer and Scottish pride, Ken Buchanan. We don't need to go into detail about how great Ken Buchanan was.

After a TKO loss to Duran, Guts Ishimatsu went on to win and defend the WBC lightweight title multiple times against very good opposition i.e Rodolfo Gonzalez, and great opposition including Ken Buchanan.

Other great wins were against Saoul Mamby - who although had many losses in his career, he had great wins i.e against Esteban De Jesus and Sang-Hyun Kim who defended the WBA title a few times.


Duran dismantled Hall of Famer Esteban De Jesus twice after De Jesus beat Duran.

Another Hall of Famer that Duran racks up on his resume, Carlos Palomino.

Duran could have just stopped fighting here and been regarded as one of the greatest of all time.

With a career record of 71 wins and 1 loss which he avenged twice over, his ballooning in weight after fights with due to the binge drinking, drugs and binge eating, it was only a matter of time when this was going to start catching up to him and by the time he fought Sugar Ray Leonard, you can imagine how old his 'ring age' became! Yet despite this, and having moved up to Welterweight, he proves his greatness by beating Sugar Ray Leonard in Montreal. If Duran beat Leonard in these conditions, just imagine what Duran perhaps could have done if they both fought back in Duran's lightweight days.

Sugar Ray Leonard in the rematch came back to humiliate Duran, but Duran was apparently out of shape (I need clarification on this), and had continued to balloon in weight after the Montreal win. Also, Leonard is just the better welterweight which no one can ever deny.


Duran still went on to beat the great Davey Moore who beat the likes of the two elites Wilfred Benitez and Ayub Kalule, and Thomas Hearn's nemesis, Iran Barkley.

Duran forced a close decision loss with the pretty much invincible Marvin Hagler, at middleweight! Duran was definitely no way near his prime at this point. Again, imagine if this fight happened at lightweight! After this fight, we saw a finished Duran getting completely dominated by Hearns...it was not the Duran that we knew.

Yes, Duran lost to Benitez, Hearns, Hagler and Leonard. However, now you can see that these 'losses' are not simply just 'losses'.

With a legendary career with 103 wins, 70 KO's and 16 losses, Duran is definitely in my top 10 P4P list of all time.

 

PernellSweetPea is one of the worst posters to ever lace up the typing gloves.

 

First off; welcome to the board anj, solid first post :thumbsup

A few things-

Duran and Marcel fought above the featherweight limit.

Kobayashi was very good (and remains underrated) but was finished at super feather and no longer champion. Still a great performance and scalp for Duran, who was yet to be honed under Brown and Arcel.

Serrano was not 'dominant'. In fact his long 'reign' was pretty dire.