I am reading the Roberto Duran book Hands of Stone and was interested by the number of non title fights he had between title defences as a Lightweight champion. The book does not really explain why he seemed to take on average 2/3 fights between each defence. I presume for money, but none of the other big 4 (Hearns, Hagler, Leonard) seemed to take as many while champs. It feels like Duran was the last throw back to the old school box every week style of 50s/60s fighters before the more paced "careerist" approach that I suppose Leonard ushered in? Do you think Duran burned himself out with all these bouts which would account for his later inconsistency? It is interesting as well that during his long reign at Lightweight he never stepped up to Lt Welter despite fighting a few ranked Lt Welters in non title bouts. In the book his managers said he deliberately kept him away from Antonio Cervantes. If anyone has any thoughts I would be interested to hear them!
I don't see any reason to believe his non-title fights led to any kind of burnout. Fighting for Duran was a pretty natural thing; had he not fought that often, I think it would have damaged him far more. Think of the ballooning in weight that would have occurred between fights, for example.
This. In fact you could argue that had he been as active post Montreal as he was pre he would not have been as inconsistent. For another example of someone who needed to be active to keep in fighting shape see James Toney.
Bowe's another one who probably needed to be kept fighting and have serious challenges to keep focused. I always thought that his management did a lot of damage by getting him the easy money fights... looking over his career you can see that they tried to keep him active: he usually fought every 3-4 months. But after a certain point you can see that when he's not taking a challenge seriously he would come in noticeably heavier and less polished. And then there are guys who need to keep fighting and training to keep themselves out of outside trouble, like Tyson. We all know the trouble he would get himself into, from street fights to car crashes to chasing women, etc. Duran could be much the same, I've read a lot of rumors of Duran getting into wild street fights, doing coke by the yard and women one after another.
By the mid-70's the "non-title" bouts had gone by the wayside. Numerous cases back in the olden days when the lessor fighter beats the over-the-weight Champ, and earns an legit title shot at the Champ.
Yeah but I think Bowes ridiculous "fights" against Dokes and Ferguson, while keeping him active, in no way prepared him for the second fight against Holyfield.
