Let's Hear It For Sugar Ray Leonard.

I didn't score Leonard round 7... Round 3 was certainly Hagler's better of the first four rounds, but he is still visibly frustrated and swining wildly (and slowly, at that). Leonard is making him miss, and lands the occasional combination. Hagler, while more effective than rounds 1 and 2, was ineffective.

If Rounds 1 and 3 are a draw, then rounds 5, 6 and 8 (wierd I didn't say 7, but the fights fresh in my mind) could also be argued a draw.

Either way, 115-113 Leonard ain't no robbery... But I do now see how people can score this fight for Hagler... And it does prove a prime Hagler beats a prime Leonard AT MIDDLEWEIGHT. I also think it proves that p4p Leonard was better... Leonard fans may agree, most Hagler fans won't... but that's how it is.

EDIT: I scored those rounds for Hagler by the way... Maybe one of them was the even round in my scorecard (5th or 6th ??)

 

a lot of rounds from that fight could be argued either way and that means there is no clear winner. And if that's the case then no one can boastthat leonard beat him since it wasn't clear cut win and I'm not buying into the storythat he was p4p better than Hagler. Not with a 36-3-1 record I'm not. And certainly not when he can't account for the losing performance against Norris.

It may not have been a robbery as you saybut Leonard did not do enough to deserve win much less the right to brag of a big win that he could put on a resume.

BTW, Hagler was shot. I know because I watched him in sparring a couple weeks before the fight.

Don't take my word for it. You could hear Ryan and Clancy at the sixth. The conversation goes something like this: Tim Ryan- "Leonard said that Hagler had lost a lot of speed and was counting on the slowness of Hagler".

That is the clincher that confirms what I long thought, that Leonard refused to take a fight with Hagler 5 years before. Ray said one month after beating Tommy that he wanted Hagler as he was doing commentary for the Hamsho fight but as the rounds progressed and Hamsho took more of an ugly beating, Ray quieted down about wanting to fight.

by the time the fight was over he completely changed his tune. Larry went up to Marvin and relayed this message from Sugar Ray: "although Leonard has said that he'd like to fight you, he says maybe you'rea little big for him.

It looks like with your weight tonight at 157 if he doesn't move up that you might come down to 154"

That was Leonard's storyfrom then on,, as seen in the Ring interview in December 81, looking to handicap Hagler by having him drop to the lowest weight possible and since he wouldn't take the bait as Lalonde had, he just quitthe sport and decided to let the time pass while Hagler wore himself out with the opposition, namely Roldan, Hearns, and especially Mugabi.


because a man's reflexes have been dulled so that leonard could pull eve with him doesn't make him special. It just means Hagler deteriorated and tells me that Leonard despite what anyone says, needed more help and concessions
than other fighters because he couldn't cut it on his own before he left the sport. Which means he wasn't anything special at all. If he were, he would have beaten when he was expected to-no excuses!

In the end, I don't appreciate his methods just as I don't believe in surprise comebacks out of the blue against a man he wanted no part of for years. Even as I don't believe his reasons for refusing to defend his title even as I didn't believe in his winning two titles in one night.

He's a fake and it showed up in the Norris fight.

 

If he was really a fake it would have showed up long before then.

 

It doesn't look like My Dinner with Conteh has seen the Colbert fight either (or maybe he just doesn't understand what he's seeing). Any similarity between the Colbert and Leonard fights lies in the fact that Hagler picked up the pace after the opening rounds and battered his opponent around the ring. One crucial difference of course is that Leonard fought a survival fight and made it to the last round (so he could benefit from poor or perhaps even corrupt judging). Colbert didn't hear the final bell.

My Dinner with Conteh also doesn't appear to know the basic facts about Leonard-Hearns I. Leonard had a deep bone bruise not a "mouse." Hearns beat Leonard's eye into a slit. Pearl believes it was in the fight that leonard suffered his detached retina. He said that the only thing that kept him from taking Leonard to the ringside physician and asking him whether it should continue was the fact that the eye was not completely closed. He said that the eye itself became discolored, and he could see that early in the fight.

Pearl also said after the fight that at the moment he stopped the fight, Hearns was taking a lot of shots, but that they must have been really soft one because Hearns otherwise would have been down and bleeding. In other words, Pearl admits to stopping a fight because of soft punches. Strange goings on if your ask me.

Had it not been for Hearns' legs going all wonky on him (under 100+ degrees temperature), Leonard would have lost nearly every round of that fight. The stoppage was controversial. If it hadn't of been we wouldn't have heard all the talk about how it wasn't. When a stoppage is obvious, nobody talks about it. Of course, I don't have a keepsake trunk with articles about it, so I can't site chapter and verse of the post fight coverage. But I have my memory and that's a hell of a lot better than the paper trail, because the press, so biased in favor of Leonard (despite Leonard's constant paranoia about that), whitewashed the controversy, justifyed the stoppage in their minds. I don't remember Dunphy retracting his very dramatic statement about how wrong it was to stop the fight, but if that's true, the fact that he would do so publicly proves how controversial the stoppage was! I do remember Dunphy that night though. He was horrified by the stoppage.

And do you guys remember all the stupid controversy over the scoring where people said Leonard should have won round 6 by more than a score of 10-9? In no other fight has the controversy ever been that on the basis of one shot that wobbled a fighter that the other guy shoul have been awarded a 10-8 or 10-7 round. Only for Leonard all the points should be used. Anything to justify the false view that Leonard was not on the receiving end of a boxing lesson that night.

Anyway, My Dinner with Conteh harbors some serious hatred for Hagler and is obviously a huge Leonard fanboy. He is so biased he seems like a caricature of a fan.

 

Here's to ya Ray! :happy :happy :happy


You have given Rooster his raison d'etre, and with it, years of thread fodder for us all.

Bless you.

 

Because for some people, if they keep repeating that and they keep hearing that pretty soon they actually come to believe that.

 

One more thing. I understand that most ringside reporters had Leonard ahead in the Hearns fight. That is an amazing fact to me, but it does help me understand why so many reporters thought Leonard beat Hagler and Leonard-Duran I was close. What I don't understand is the power Leonard has over people that makes them see him winning when he is losing. It's like Leonard is a Jedi using a mental trick on the weak minded. (No offense)

 

Damn it Sal! You know my logic is the glue that holds this forum together.

 

..........Not making fun! Honestly. You are an indespensible part of this place. atriot

 

Well the guy blew his cover. I didn't know for sure that he didn't see it but once he admitted his age I did. Yes Lethal, he is one of those hiding his intentions with the usual "I love Hagler" types trying to follow in my footsteps and counter my accusations with his own. Except that all he's been armed with is an article that dates back "decades ago" as Dinner would put it.


I once cornered a writer who wrote some trashy Leonard article on a website a few years back. He didn't know how to defend his views at all and petered out early like most of them. And that's exactly the reason I don't understand why his fans laud him the way they do. They come on strong with the typical boasts but once the facts are presented, they take off limping Young Griffo style.

To tell the truth, I don't think they know why they believe the way they do. Could be the hype that made an early impression. They say the human mind is most susceptible to propoganda at ages of 7 and before.

I don't know why Leonard couldn't turn out to be more like Sanchez where he beat back everyone in brutal fashion. Sal was always up for a fight. You name the time and the place and he'll meet you there. And he never had a problem with rematches. What's more he always came out of fights with his face unmarked.

No controversy, just tko wins-no help needed. Sanchez would hate it if an opponent asked "Sal, would you like me to weigh in such and such weight to make it easy for you?" An insult. Hell no and he wouldn't tell you to hold on a few years "I need to make sure you can't hurt me it we fight"

Anyhow, I had Tommy way in front of Leonard. Ray wasn't doing anything except following him around and throwing haymakers every 45 seconds of the round. Tommy wilted late as you'd expect because his dumb trainer had him melt down to 145. Too light, no stamina for the late rounds, and no power

 

Leonard was great great great no doubt about it but he never achieved as much as his rivals duran, hearns and hagler. The later parts of his career were a joke he never won the super middleweight titles and light heavyweight titles. that fight with LALONDE was joke of joke

How can a super middleweight win the light heavy title at super middle

 

Half? More like 1/10. Camacho didn't beat any great anywhere near their better form, he lost to every one of them.

 

he said "Ray always responded"

See Norris and Camacho for definition of "response"

 

You mean Norris' response to Jacksons right hand and Macho's response to some heavy hitting from Rosario? Well one was Goodnight Irene and the other's answer was to fight to not get hit against dangerous opponents from then on