Moving up in weight to avoid tougher opponents?

Ray wasn't scared of Aaron. Aaron was lucky Ray didn't get to him in 1982.

 

Definitely was scared

 

No way in hell. Time line proves it.

 

How many times does this HBO Legendary Nights myth have to be refuted?

Pryor had his chance. He got an offer at the biggest name in the sport very shortly after winning the junior welterweight title. Ray was a diva and commanded most of the payday, but Pryor had just received $50k for beating a legend in Cervantes, and a few months later was getting offered 10 times that to face Ray and he said no.

Ray's "low-balling" of Duran for the first fight was probably worse, given how proven Duran was, and that Duran was a pretty popular fighter himself (especially in NY). Duran was champ from 1972-78, a top contender at WW, best fighter of the 70s, on the cover of Sports Illustrated a couple times, and he gets about a million and a half compared to Ray getting like $8-10 million.

 

Mares.

 

Aaron should've went after Mamby instead of Ray. Might have been better with that unified title under his belt going after Ray.

 

cowardzaghe moving up to LHW to fight bigger money making 40something names in America, thus providing him with some much needed income that he hadn't got from making 11 years of wbo title defences.

In this way he avoided defending Kessler old titles against more meatier opposition.

 

He did, after ducking Leonard:

https://news.google.com/newspapers?...AIBAJ&sjid=G6EFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1792,5396168&hl=en

 

Sad they couldn't have pulled that fight off. Pryor would've had fits with Saoul.

 

....right...nd joe louis was afraid of johnny paychek..

 

That might have been a very interesting Pryor v Mamby fight.

Mamby fought Duran, Cervantes, DeJesus, Harold Weston and others of a good caliber... and held his own.

Wouldn't be surprised Mamby might eke out an upset decision.

 

I doubt it

Pryor was much smaller and regularly getting dropped in his fights.

Leonard fought Hearns instead. There was huge demand for Leonard/Hearns to unify the Welterweight divison.

I am confident if Leonard and Pryor had fought at 147 lbs in 1981, Leonard would have knocked him out, even if Pryor was coked up by his trainer.

 

The whole card would have been great

Lesson learned from the Harold Smith debacle. If it's too good to be true, it probably is.

Edit:

My mistake. Pryor/Mamby was apparently not part of the ill fated MAPS 2/23//81 Madison Square Garden card that never came off.

 

Been pondering this since the threads inception.

My conclusion is, it's an acceptable career choice.

If a boxer feels he isn't the best BW in the world, but could be the best SBW in the world, there's no negative connotation in him moving up.

Take Frampton. He's made a name for himself, knows he won't beat Rigo, so he's leaving the division.

That's perfectly fair game imo.

 

Leonard wins by KO for sure, even with "the bottle" helping Pryor.