What do you personally make of the No Mas fight?

He plain assed quit, a big stain on his legacy and rightly so.

 

My take on the fight is this. Duran wasn't the same fighter as he was when he beat SRL earlier, he knew he didn't have the time to train properly and he was ****ed off going into the fight. (much of this is his own fault btw). He was significantly weaker and didn't have that "fire' he normally brings into the ring.

During the fight, SRL was moving etc, which was causing Duran problems, but once SRL started mocking him, and taunting him, he just lost it.

I think he would have been okay losing by decision, but never would he allow himself to be taunted. Add it all up and he pretty much quite out of frustration.

As Leonard says it was like a guy waking up 20 minutes late for work, getting dressed missing breakfast and rushing out the door, only to realize 10 minutes later that traffic's not moving because of an accident up ahead. I ws just one of those moments when everything went wrong.

BTW there are different less obvious ways to quite in a fight. Tyson did it by biting off a piece of Holyfield's ear. Liston never stood up for the 7th? round, McCall literally started crying in the ring.

 

He didn't seem to have a problem when Edwin Viruet fought similarly a few years before.

I think Duran couldn't handle being clowned basically. That's the difference.
Lost his cool and quit. Probably almost instantly regretted it but there you go. His pride would not permit him to admit that he just lost it.
Duran was a very emotional guy.

Leonard did absolutely nothing wrong.

 

From Duran's point of view he broke the warriors code. Warriors fight in the ring, they don't clown around.

 

Well Duran is one of my all time favourite fighters but I can't find an excuse for him.
Leonard had to put up with a lot of unsavoury stuff from Duran leading up to the first fight remarks about his wife, his manhood etc and was drawn into a fight that favoured Duran.
So he simply fought the fight that that Duran would least want and along with the taunting he probably figured that mentally it was something that Duran would find hard to handle and he was obviously right.

 

I don't know what I think of it, I know if I were someone who paid to attend the fight, I would have been ****ed. I know that as of today, the outcome of that fight appears to bother Leonard more than it does Duran, but legacy wise it hurt Duran a great deal.

What I don't know is to what extent is "clowning" or taunting an opponent allowed under the rules of boxing?

If Mayweather started throwing bolo punches at a guy today what would the reaction be?

It was just an all around strange fight.

That said I think it was up to Duran to change the dynamics of the fight. As Tyson once said, everyone has a plan until they get hit.

 

It's pretty black and white to me. Leonard was taunting him and stifling his offense; Duran was helpless and frustrated. So he quit.

 

Pretty sure someone else just broke down this myth in a thread a week or two ago. Duran had plenty of time to prepare--more than usual even.

 

Please direct me to that thread if you don't mind. As mentioned I blame a lot of what happened on the night of the fight itself on Duran, but there were things that lead up to Duran having a sub performance, and his dramatic increase in weight following the first SRL fight played a large role in that.

His manager felt that Duran was out of control and so he figured might as well get a huge payday out of it while we still can. But that was his manager's thinking, not Duran's. Interesting enough it was also SRL's thinking, who himself said, "I knew Duran was partying in NYC and was extremely overweight, and I wanted to rematch him as soon as possible" or words to that affect.

Why? Because he didn't want to have to fight the same version of Duran he just lost to.

Fair game I suppose, but much like Mayweather, they certainly used their economic clout to get every advantage they can in their fights.

As for it being a myth, it was Leonard himself who said Duran didn't have the same strength or power he had in the first fight. So if it wasn't true, why would he essentially taint his win?