Ray Leonard - Smoke and Mirrors?

Hagler $12 million and Leonard $11 million.

 

Hagler past his prime or not was A natural undispute middleweight champion who had recorded some very big wins recently and active going into 1987........

then take sugar ray leonard a welterweight who had never fought at 160lb, was filled with ring rust having fought just one fight in a 5 year span(in which he was floored and looked awful) and he comes and beats hagler.


There is no exuse for Hagler in this fight, he had every sort of advantage from a mental standpoint in his favor, and leonard came in and proved himself a true champion.

 

You mean a real chump. A fighter with that kind of skills you just mentioned you'd think he wouldnt have had much of problem dealing with Duran, a fighter jumping two weight classes or Norris, a 3-1 underdog. .

 

Why is it a silly comparison? Holmes was champion and Spinks was the challenger but never any mention of Spinks asking Larry to drop to the lower limit of heavyweight. Same with Sanchez-Gomez. All Sanchez had to drop was four measely pounds for Wilfredo. It's what Leonard would have done. I dont recall Eddie mustafa Muhammud threatening to pull out of his fight with Snipes unless he agreed to meet him halfway.

If it's so easy to put on pounds then why didnt leonard just tack on another pound and a half from where he was for the Kalule fight and he'd be a middleweight? He doesnt have to weigh 4 more pounds. And besides, he eventually came up to 157 anyways so why not to 154 or 55 at an earlier date when Ray was telling people he wanted Marvin?

 

Yeah, if you think you can beat a guy and you say you want to fight him, it means much less if you stipulate he must come down in weight from where he has been fighting.

Middleweight world champion is the title given to the man who is theoretically better than every other man at 160 or less, and that includes guys at 154, 147, 140, etc.
So it makes no sense for a challenger to stipulate that he shouldn't weigh 160, or that he should contest that 160 title at 154. He is what he is, 160 pound champion, and if you want that title he should weigh whatever he likes up to 160.

To Leonard's credit, he fought Marvin Hagler at 160.

 

I don't know why I' responding because after reading post I came to the conclusion you knew very little about boxing, or your just a Sugar Ray hater.

Roberto Duran is agreat fighter in his own right, often mentioned in top 5 p4p ever lists. Why would you expect Sugar Ray to have an easy time with him considering he gave Hagler, the natural middleweight, fits? Besides, you could make an arguement for Sugar Ray easily defeating Duran 2 of the three times, so your point is null and void either way.

Don't eve bring up the Norris fight. It's probably the single reason why Idon't have a lot of respect for so called hardcore fans of the sport. I hate to generalise, but there is absolutely no consistancy. It's common knowledge that in the sport of Boxing, when you're past it, you really are past it. This isn't football or Hockey. You don't have team mates to carry you through a fight. A fighter gets old and his reflexes suffer, he's no longer as fit, he probably loses some power, and his staminia would have worsened. That's exactly what happened to Leonard in the Norris fight. He got old.

To sum up, you cannot criticise Leonard for not having an easy time with Roberto Duran. If you going to do that, show some consistancy and give Hagler hell for having a hard time with him, despite being naturally bigger than him. Lastly, lets not bring up Leonard's fight with Norris when he was effectively shot to make a point. It's a disgrace.

 

Hard to argue here. As of the better win because both were closer to their peaks, there was a mere 5 month difference between fights, not exactly that meaningful. And for the record Leonard was still improving, indeed he improved from the first Duran fight.

 

What are you talking about? You're pretending asif Duran was partying, laying on the beach with a drink, was handed the bill with a note below the price "p.s. , you're fighting Leonard tomorrow, so sweat off 40 lbs".

He knew the fight was coming up and he should've taken responsibility! No lame excuses. He gave up in embarrassing fashion, in fact it was so bad that they had to come up with the lamest excuse in boxing history, "stomach cramps"

 

Didn't Wlad Klitschko or some members of his team blame his defeat to Brewster on a corner man, Joe Souza, applying vaseline to his body ?
(That surpasses "stomach cramps" as a lame excuse IMO)

I'm not sure what Emmanuel Steward said about the Wlad-Brewster result, but he's certainly the propogator of another all-time lame excuse - Tommy Hearns' "leg massage" !

 

Another surpassing excuse is slick's "Evander was basically having a heart attack in the ring"


:rofl

 

Yes, the excuse was that rubbing too much vaseline impeded his body's ability to sweat.

I think it was a left hook from Brewster myself.

 

I have to admit, there are some strong competitors for the title of lamest excuse.


I hadn't heard the vaseline excuse to be honest (i thought the excuse was that he was drugged), but it is certainly on par with the leg massage, Holyfield's steroid attack and the stomach cramps.



To be fair though, it was Emmanuel Steward who made the leg massage excuse, and although i'm not sure, i don't think Duran originally came up with the cramps, but he certainly fared with it once it was out.

 

Didn't a doctor actually come up with that one ?


The 90s were an innovative time for heavyweights. Heart attacks, nervous breakdowns, episodes of cannibalism, those guys brought it all to the ring. Then Golota went and spoiled it all with his nonsense.

 

Hahaha, yeah Doctor Slick :rofl

But yeah that's probably where it came from. Doctors aren't known for exaggerating either or thrusting forth worst case scenario's lol!

 

Yeah, it comes to something when a fighter elaborates on how he ate a massive stack of pancakes and steaks a few hours before a fight in an effort to excuse himself for losing.
"I ate too many sweets, my stomach hurts" really should only ever be used by children 9 year olds and under.