No mas : on 30 for 30 today

Duran immediately wanted the money. Let's not kid ourselves. His fault he didn't train hard. Floyd keeps in decent shape year round. Plus they admitted he always ballooned up and were used to always having to cut slot of weight. And Ray Leonard totally defeated him on every possible level mental and physically, emotional, spirit, heart therefore he folded and quit.

I conclude with Duran's own excuse out of his own mouth:
"I ate two hot steaks then drank some cold water, that's why my stomach hurt which then weakened me". He folded up like a lawn chair.

 

How old are you?

The reason I ask is because you're clueless about the times and the paydays fighters got those days.

Only primadonna's, gold medalist like Ali and Leonard got paid during those times.
It was duiring an era of boxing where as a kid, if you wanted to become a boxer, you thought about winning a gold medal in the Olympics.

Young kids who box dont think that way anymore because nowdays, you dont need the gold medal to come through paydays as a pro.

No he could'nt have made 1 million fighting Hearns. Hearns did'nt become an established star until after he fought Leonard.......and Cuevas did'nt equate to a million dollar payday for Duran.

We live in different times now, any clown in the top 10 of a division can makd a million dollar payday.

Bottom line here is that you dont go from being accustomed to getting paid 100 thousand in a fight to turning down an offer that at the time Duran cant possible know will be offered again.

Manny Pacquiao turned down an excess of a 50 million payday to fight Mayweather. He's unlikely to ever make that ammount of money in a fight again.

......at least with Pacquiao though, he's gotten numerous million dollar paydays in his career, its water off his back if the opportunity for such a payday never comes again, but with Duran only having that one million dollar payday for the Leonard fight to now be offered 8 times as much????
Anybody in Duran's shoes would never turn that down.

 

Old enough that I drove myself to watch that fight on closed circuit.

Duran was THE MAN after he beat Leonard. HE was the attraction. As long as he fought an opponent with a name, he could have pocketed decent money -- a million or more. People would have paid to see him.

Do some research: Benitez made a million to fight Leonard, and Leonard's team paid him ANOTHER million to pass on a rematch. So the million-dollar payday was not something that was out of reach.

And the Leonard rematch payday wasn't going to go up in smoke. What, Leonard was going to stay a superstar after losing to Duran and moving up to face nameless junior middles? No way. Duran had all the power. Leonard NEEDED him.

How old are you that you seriously believe if Duran's management had said, "We want the rematch, but we're not going to meet your deadline and we're not going to fight as quickly as you want" that Leonard's people would have walked away and Duran would have never gotten another seven-figure payday? That they wouldn't have eventually worked out the deal for a rematch, with Duran getting plenty of money -- more than Leonard, whether it was $8-10 million or $5 million or whatever.

And the reasoning that Duran wins the rematch if he's in prime shape means that if he holds out and gets time to train for the rematch, he then makes that money PLUS whatever fights come down the road -- whether that's Cuevas or Hearns or Benitez or whoever. So he would have made more money by holding out in the long run, provided he wins Leonard II.

Nobody MADE Duran blow up between fights -- he'd done it before and gotten back down to 135 and still won impressively. Nobody MADE Duran take the "short money."

Duran MADE some contenders come to Panama to fight him when he was lightweight champ. Was that unfair? His team offered Ken Buchanan pennies on the dollar to come to Panama for a rematch, so little money that Buchanan turned it down. Duran didn't say, "Nope, I want to give Ken the fairest terms possible, a healthy cut of the purse and a neutral site." He didn't say, "It's not fair for me to make these worthy American contenders come to Panama and face me where I have an advantage, I'll go fight them somewhere else." He said, "I'm the champion, you want to fight for my title come to my house and try to beat me where I have the advantage."

That's what people who have power do, they use it.

 

he was 74-1 when leonard made him quit:deal better career you must be on something. the only people who think duran had a better career then leonard hearns and haggler are his groupies like you:hat

he won titles in four weightclasses leaonrd and hearns won 5 what's your point. he lost to both in humiliating fashion he wasn't on their level:deal

 

Actually most of the boxing community think that Duran had a better career than either SRL, Hearns, or Hagler, even the good people at

http://www.ibroresearch.com/

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

And I bet if you took a poll on this site you'd come up with the same answer, and you spelt Hagler wrong dumbass.