Roberto Duran 1980 vs Jose Mantequilla Napoles 1972, 147 lbs, 15 rounds.

Duran`s body was slimmer and quicker at 147, he was a short guy and looked chubby at 154, he out-skilled Leonard and was a more skilled fighter than Ray, Leonard had better foot speed and reach and used these two things to beat Duran in the rematch, but he had to move far more than Napoles did in his fights.

 

Jose might not have been that smooth at 154 and neityher was Duran who gave away a reach advantage to a very defensive fighter, Napoles would be right in front Duran.

 

As great as Duran was, he could look a bit flat footed against a good mover. Of course, he was a master at cutting the ring off but if your lateral movement was more unpredictable and varied he could start to get frustrated.
It's too difficult to pick a winner here with any conviction but if Napoles can stay out of the corners he's got a real chance in this one.

 

If you are talking about Duran as a welterweight in general, Napoles beats. If you are going to limit it to Duran of that one night in Montreal, it isn't really fair.
That was THE night of Duran's life, the night everything went his way and it all worked like he imagined it would. I bet that, to Duran, that fight felt like it lasted mere moments and was over way too soon.

 

Duran narrowly.

 

I think Duran only really began to have any real difficulty with movers when he was older, heavier, far less motivated, more inconsistent and had lost his closing footspeed. Leonard, Laing, Benitez etc.

When he was young and more of a pure instinctive swarmer, he cut the gap on atg peripheral movers like Buchanan and Marcel with chilling speed. Even skilled runners like Fernandez. He had that period of transition, experimentation and evolution from swarmer to the more patient and complete prime version where he wasn't always consistent or urgent in cutting off the ring against varying degrees of highly negative fighters who were disengaged somewhat from any serious attempt to win. Bizzarro, Viruet, Ortiz etc. None of those guys looked like beating him at any stage tbh. It's only an opinion and may be viewed by some as excuse-making, but I don't think Duran viewed them as legitimate threats like he did Buchanan and Marcel and treated them with an arrogant lack of respect as he was prone to doing with people in general. The Duran that beat Buchanan would've ran Bizzarro out of the ring and stopped him sooner, but lost to Leonard, Moore, Barkley etc without the later underpinnings from Arcel and Brown imo.

Napoles was never a mover anyway despite his awesome footwork, not one to counter on the move or disengage and use excessive peripheral and lateral movement. He tended to stay within range to keep trying to bait punches, slip them and cause as much damage as possible. He was a shade smoother and consistently tidier than Duran a bit more often than not, maybe with a timing edge, but a lot more open in terms of guarding himself in exchanges. Lower hands, slower defensive reflexes, more of a tendency to bait and depend on head and upper body movement to avoid punches by minimal margins or just take them to land his own. Rather than tighten up guard, get his chin down, position himself more defensively up close or at distance like Duran did, and Duran also did a lot of what Napoles did above on top of being a bit faster of hand and with a freakish ability to roll under punches and punish with counters from airtight defensive positions. Napoles was brilliant at smothering and tangling opponents at mid to close range and then shifting free to smack them with counter punches in clusters, but again, I think he'd lose that type of battle with Duran a bit more often than not as well the above scenario in terms of the exchanges, and that's the ground I see the fight being contested on. Very close fight obviously with Napoles maybe timing Duran early like De Jesus did and scoring a flash knockdown but the mentioned factors being the slight difference maker for Duran in an ungodly fight. Sorry for the length of post! I'd meant to reply to you in short and separate other points into a second, more general post but it all segwayed in to one.

 

Brilliant stuff.

 

Everything I wanted to say - kudos.

 

No need to apologise Tin Ribs. Cracking post mate. I'm a huge fan of both Fighters and feel that a case can be made for either man. I guess we've proved that. Nice one.

 

Cheers pal, agreed (on both having a strong case).

 

Don't apologize, write more!

 

What an insightful post!

 

Napoles close UD, or SD over Duran. Real good fight it would be.

 

Hands of stone takes a 9-6 type of fight, I really like Napoles too, and I think while he'd have some beautiful moments Duran's volume would get the nod.