Rank These Five Fighters In Order Of Greatness.......

1.Mickey Walker
2.Barney Ross
3.Archie Moore
4.Ray Leonard
5.Gene Tunney

I think I have the top three in 8th, 9th and 10th places in my all-time rankings. You could throw a blanket over the top three and/or rank them in any order, they are all on a similar level.

SRL has to be 4th and Tunney has to be 5th though, no uncertainty with those two.

 

Ray has benefited mightily from the reality of the championship distance being the standard title match limit during his peak, as those vital rounds spared him a second WW decision loss to Hearns, and a very lopsided points deficit in Montreal. (As a counterbalance to this, the abolition of the championship distance preserved a draw for a late fading Hearns in their rematch that Ray has conceded as a win for Tommy, a situation though which many feel Hearns could not have survived for three more rounds.)

SRL's stock was also boosted slightly by the needlessly over reactionary last second stoppage of Benitez (by Carlos Padilla, after El Radar cleanly ducked Ray's follow up attack against the ropes), a result Wilfredo desperately wanted a chance to avenge between Ray's first two bouts with Duran. (The WBC should have honored their rule against immediate title rematches by requiring Ray and Wilfred to square off a second time for the right to earn a second challenge for the WBC WW belt.)

As a defending champion, Ray repelled the WW title challenges of Dave Green, Larry Bonds, (I tend to not count unification bouts such as Hearns I & II for either Ray or Tommy) and Bruce Finch. His successful repulse of Duran for his WBC Super Middleweight Title in their rubber match for his final victory is a solid and highly credible defense, coming as it did off the heels of El Cholo's legendary triumph over Barkley, and I do consider Duran III to be the best decision win of this touted stylist's career.

Despite Ray's hiatus of little more than a year after Duran, I do consider Norris to have produced an underrated win over him, as Ray still had something left at this point. Terry had blown out Mugabe, would stop Donald Curry a few months after decisioning SRL, and stop Meldrick Taylor and Maurice Blocker before Simon Brown ended his P4P best streak. (Of course Norris was resilient enough to shortly avenge his upset knockout loss at Brown's hands with a masterful performance. Maybe Terry would have similarly reversed the Jackson setback in similar fashion given the chance. The Terrible one was done by 30, but his ability to recover repeatedly from high profile setbacks was as rapid as that of any champion of modern times. I can't think of anybody else who rose from so widely viewed a loss as devastating as his knockout to Jackson to attain number one P4P status that quickly, and he rebounded earlier from the decision setback to Derrick Kelly as well. His ability to climb to championships on the back of defeats is a throwback to an age when much more active future greats frequently needed those early experiences to evolve to higher levels.)

Unlike Red though, I don't place much credence in Camacho-SRL, likening it to Holmes-Ali, or Mancini-Haugen. Entering a match with a torn calf muscle when the legs are so crucial to the style generally being used was foolhardy, and it was obvious Ray's chin was gone. (Coming back against a fast and accomplished southpaw who handled the aging process well certainly didn't help matters.

 

You don't think the dynamics of the match and Leonards pacing would have been vastly different if it was over 12 rounds? :nono

Benitez was comprehensively outboxed and deserved no immediate rematch under any train of thought. The stoppage was insignificant.

 

The order I have them in on my provisional P4P list is:

Mickey Walker
Archie Moore
Barney Ross
Sugar Ray Leonard
Gene Tunney

 

Well, the fact of how things unfolded in the 12 rounder they did have later is available for everybody to judge for themselves. Ray would be 2-0 over Tommy (both by stoppage) if both matches were for 15 rounds, while Hearns would be 2-0 over SRL if each bout had a 12 round limit and was fairly scored.

My problem is with the fact that Ray did get an immediate rematch with Duran in violation of WBC regulations (not that rules and regulations ever mean anything with banana republic fiefdoms like Suckamain's WBC.) Wilfred wanted a rematch with Ray whether or not a title was involved, and their bout was competitive enough that a rematch may have been an attractive and lucrative promotion while they were both between championships. Regardless of whether or not Ray was active between Montreal and New Orleans, he should not have been Roberto's first match as a welterweight champion.

Benitez came on very impressively after SRL with fine stoppages over Turner and Chiaverini (with Ray commenting from ringside and conducting the post fight interview with Wilfred for NBC), and would have been a suitable first (within WBC regulations) challenger for Duran to try getting his old WBC WW belt back. (As I've established before, I truly believe Roberto should have committed himself to a WW unification fight immediately after Montreal between the winner of the imminent Hearns-Cuevas fight. With so many expecting the victor of that one to knock out or even kill Duran, he would have been far less likely to bloat up and get out of shape between fights.)

 

You're talking about two matches 8 years apart. Just because it happened (by the skin of Tommy's teeth) 8 years later doesn't mean it would happen in 81. I'm not at all saying it could not have happened, being a big Hearns fan i'd like to say it would have. But, it may or may not have happened. Too much speculation for me.

I actually give Hearns a bit more credit than most winning the rematch.

I also think Hearns at 154 would have beaten Leonard.

We all know 50 happenings that went on with the WBC and WBA, particularly if King was involved. Lets look at a couple

When Leon Spinks won the WBA and WBC Heavyweight championships from Muhammad Ali in 1978, the WBC stripped Leon Spinks of his title. Jose Sulaiman said the WBC did so because Spinks was signed for a rematch with Ali instead of fighting a Don King fighter, Ken Norton.

In 1983, WBC champion Bobby Chacon was signed to fight the WBC’s mandatory challenger for his title, Corny Boza Edwards. Promoter Don King, however, wanted his fighter, Hector Camacho, to fight for the title. Even though WBC rules said the mandatory challenger should receive a shot at the title, the WBC withdrew its sanction from the fight and then stripped Chacon for refusing to fight Camacho.

The Duran rematch was yet another. Money talked back then, and money was talking way louder for Duran and Leonard then Benitez so he got shelved. People wanted Duran and Leonard back in the ring, and it was where the moola lay. Duran was hardly going to fight Benitez for half of what he could fight Leonard for, if the WBC let him get away with it.

Corrupt times.