Roberto Duran calls today's fighters mediocre at best!

No disrespect, but how can he call someone mediocre when this guy quit on his stool? And out of all fighters that dont fight as often as fighters did when he was active, he decided to use PBF as an example. Ignoring the fact that great fighters like Winky, Mosley & DLH have taken long lay offs, but he chose to only talk about PBF. Is it cause he knows PBF is better than he was? He calls PBF overrated, but he PBF accomplished things that he couldn't when he was fighting. I like Duran inside & outside the ring, but he's wrong right here.

 

Leonard has around 40 fights and Ali around 60. Surely Duran doesn't see them as great fighters either. And they never fought only for pride, etc, as money was pretty much a motivation for them as well.

 

Hopkins would have minced, I repeat "minced" Duran at middleweight. Not even one classic poster picked Duran to beat Hopkins when it was done in a thread a few months ago. I could go on and make a constructive case for him beating Hearns and Leonard as well. Hagler would be Hopkins' toughest test at 160lbs.

You my man, are simply a fool.

 

Hopkins, if he was lucky at MIDDLEWEIGHT would have been allowed to carry Duran's spitbucket and empty it. Duran would have brutalized him. And humiliated him. Hagler would have made him "No MAS" it like his boss did on the 6th. Leonard would have made a fool out of him, and Hearns would have knocked him cold. RJJ, Calzaghe and Taylor wouldnt have lasted in the 80's and all those men OWN Hopkins. :smoke

 

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Excerpts taking from Mike Silver's "The Arc of Boxing" - And reposted from a thread on another cyberish boxing zone.

Excerpts from Silver’s book concerning Mayweather, Jr.
Tony Arnold (former amateur and professional boxer from 1949 – 1957. Student of trainers Willie Grunes and Vic Zimet. Wrote for Boxing Digest magazine and was Southern Florida correspondent for The Ring magazine, 1980’s. Archivist for one of boxing’s largest film libraries): “From what I can see Floyd Mayweather does not have what they used to call ‘ring guile’ or ‘ring generalship’. He uses speed and quick hands to defeat opponents that are slower moving. He dominates with speed, which is enough to overcome opponents with third-rate skills. But years ago you needed more than speed to dominate really good fighters.
The old time fighters were cagey. They used head and shoulder feints to draw leads. They would have done the same to Floyd. That’s a lost art; drawing leads to make a guy throw the kind of punches you want him to throw so you know what you’re going to counter with. If you look at the film of one of the Lew Ambers vs. Tony Canzoneri fights you could see where Ambers would try to force Canzoneri to jab at him by lowering his head and moving his shoulders side to side. He was enticing Canzoneri to throw the kind of punch that he wanted. Little moves like that. And they did it so quick and so subtle you had to really watch for it.
Canzoneri would do the same thing to Ambers. He tried to sucker Ambers into throwing a right or a left jab. They could actually almost read what the other guy was going to throw just by the moves they made. Floyd Mayweather, Jr., is so totally removed from that kind of skill because he never learned it.
Mayweather doesn’t capitalize on an opponents mistakes – he just bewilders them with speed and throws a lot of fast punches and moves around quick. That’s enough to win the fight. Mayweather wouldn’t know how to make a fighter do what he wants him to. If he met a fighter who was crafty enough not to be bewildered by his speed, I don’t think he would know how to handle him. Against third rate opponents Mayweather’s speed is enough to make him look like a defensive genius…”
Mike Capriano, Jr. (Son of trainer Mike Capriano, Sr., the trainer of Jake LaMotta, in addition to many other top professional fighters. Following in his father’s footsteps, Mike Jr. became an outstanding trainer andmanager. From 1952 to 1955 was head coach for the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps boxing team, whose boxers won a record number of service championships under his tutelage): “Mayweather just wants to punch and run. But against those old time welterweight and middleweight fighters you are not going to do that because they’re going to keep you on the ropes and hit you with clean punches. He could run all he wants but sooner or later he has to come in and make contact with his opponent and then those guys are going to tie him up and grab him, push him into the corner, push him up against the ropes and start ripping punches up.
Fighters like Joey Archer and Billy Graham are going to box Mayweather. They’d have that left hand out in front and throwing combination punches. They are going to box him. And when Mayweather jumps in to deliver his quick punches he’s not going to hit anybody because they’re going to tie him up and put him back out there. It’s going to be a boxing match. The old pros are looking at him and arranging for where they’re going to attach and they’re setting him up.”
Carlos Ortiz (Former undisputed lightweight and junior welterweight champion of the world. Fought professionally from 1955 to 1972. One of the greatest lightweight champions of the 20th century): “Mayweather is just a regular fighter with great speed. He would have a lot of trouble in my time because every fighter that you fought in my time was a good fighter and was trying to get to the title. There was only one champion per weight class and there were three to four thousand fighters looking for that title. Today you don’t have that competition.
De La Hoya doesn’t impress me. He is a good fighter for today. In my time De La Hoya would jut be considered mediocre.”
Bill Goodman (Licensed corner man with the New York State Athletic Commission 1957-66. A student of boxing for over 60 years): “What comes to mind when I watch today’s fighters are the words ‘unskilled labor.’ Floyd Mayweather, Jr., and Oscar De La Hoya are the best of the unskilled labor. They stand out because there’s nobody around. They also stand out because they resemble some of what we used to see. But when compared to the top welterweights and middleweights that I saw years ago, Mayweather and De La Hoya are just better than average second rate fighters. That’s the way I look at both of them.
I know that many fans will vehemently disagree with me. But you have a different caliber of individual watching fights today than you did in bygone eras. Years ago you had fighters who were more knowledgeable and more skillful, so the fans knew to look for certain things. Most boxing fans today are between 20 and 40 years old, so what do they remember? They don’t know.
Floyd Mayweather, Jr., has a great deal of natural ability. But it hasn’t been brought out the way it was with the fighters of years ago. I don’t think he jabs enough. And he doesn’t take advantage of opportunities. He ducks and slips punches but instead of taking advantages of what he just did, he lets it go by. He doesn’t follow up. He makes some pretty moves, and looks nice doing it, but nothing happens. He doesn’t fire. Mayweather throws one left hand and he stops punching. He doesn’t follow it up with 2-3-4 left jabs like they did years ago. Consequently, he doesn’t get a barrage going, he doesn’t get any momentum. Like I said, it’s unskilled labor.
Mayweather is very fast, but he does not compare to those better welterweights that were around years ago. How can you compare him to a guy like Tommy Bell from the 1940’s? It’s night and day. Of course someone who doesn’t know Tommy Bell would see a number of losses on his record and not be impressed. But look at who he fought! Bell fought anybody and everybody. Like most fighters he stayed around a lot longer than he should have, but in his prime he would have licked both Mayweather and De La Hoya with one hand behind his back. Even a guy like Gil Turner, who was a 1950’s welterweight contender, wouldn’t have any trouble with either Mayweather or De La Hoya.
They talk about Mayweather’s speed, but he isn’t as fast and skillful as Bernie Docusen, who fought Sugar Ray Robinson for the title in 1948 and gave him plenty of trouble. Would you say Mayweather’s going to give Ray Robinson as a welterweight plenty of trouble? There’s no comparison. But you go and tell that to a young fan today and they think you’re a psycho.”

 

You can say what you want, but RJJ would have been nice in the 80's.

Don't let nostalgia get the best of you. Keep that **** real.

 

Cramps.

 

Duran is still dizzy from that Hearns right hand.

Nothing he can do or say will erase the fact that he was victim to arguably the greatest KO punch in the history of the sport...

 

Hands of stone is one of my all time fav, he said a lot of true things there, but to call todays elite mediocre is just old ego talking.

 

Duran went 1 - 5 against Leonard,Hagler,Hearns,Benitez....He quit when things weren't going his way...He's a great fighter but probably the most overrated fighter ever, people love to point out his greatest win against Leonard. Yet they fail to give credit to Leonard when Duran quit when not even hurt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-Ipn_Y3iNM

 

Yeah because Duran beat Barkley by split decision now he ko's Hopkins..LMAO Hopkins beats Duran at middle and it wouldn't have been close.

 

I guess you didn't watch his fight with Barkley !! The man who also KO ed Hearns ! And on the topic Duran is absolutly right ..We live in a gae where mediocre fighters are sky rocketed to all time great status over night !

 

As everyone said on the classic where I post.

Prescott is as biased as you'll find on these shores. Quite simple a fool of the highest order.

 

:rofl Thats what I call "when a poster gets nailed"!
Great post mon!