What really went wrong when Duran met Hearns

there was something wrong with Duran that night. He was getting ****ed up from the start and could not avoid the bombs, long before the KO. I don't believe a prepared Duran, like the one that fought Hagler, would've got done like that from the word go.
There was more to it that a bad style match-up IMO.

incidentally...does anyone remember the betting lines for the fights between the fab 4?
How strong a favourite was Hagler over Leonard, for example?

 

Leonard was 3-1 in the UK. I remember because I had money on it.

 

thanks Gaz. So it's not like he was a massive outsider, I thought he might've been.
You must be a bit older than I figured you to be.

 

And a bit more "knowledgeable"..

I seem to remember Leonard was 5-1 in the weeks leading up to the fight but shortened in the last week or so as people started second guessing themselves and making a case for the underdog.

 

Exactly, to be scientific.

 

Yeah, but it landed on the forehead. If it had landed on the chin, who knows what would have happened.

Oh and to people who say Duran got caught with a good punch obviously haven't seen the fight. He was beaten like a drum for 2 rounds, he was lucky to get through the first.

 

These are excerpts this book:

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Take it as it is, for Duran always had an excuse for everything.


Duran had lapsed back into his old routine and was more interested in making music than training. Some reports had him coming down from as much as 196 pounds.

"When we left Panama we went to Nassau in the Bahamas," said Plomo. "He had been drinking and throwing up, which lowers his defense. We spent two months there but he was not able to train there even once. He was sick all the time. After two months there that Duran had not been able to train even one full day, he was not in good condition to fight against Tommy Hearns...When we arrived in Las Vegas, Duran had still six pounds to lose. He had to run in the morning and then go to a sauna before getting on the scale"......Duran admitted to this author that he trained only two weeks in the Bahamas and one in Hollywood for the bout.

 

Before the bout, a story made the rounds that Hearns burned Duran mentally without trying. If true, it marked the first time that Duran was intimidated before a bout. Duran was a past master at pre-fight intimidation. With some it worked, with others it didn't. Thus, Duran expressed his fears and insecurities through intimidation. When it didn't work, he lost an edge. For years he had been typecast as a maniacal fighter with little control. Now, Hearns had switched the roles. At one point before the bout, Hearns pulled down Duran's hat down over his eyes, a sure-fire mistake in any setting.

"That happened, sure," said Hearns's trainer Emanuel Steward. "Roberto just ran away when Tommy pulled his hat down. I don't know what it was, but Tommy always intimidated Roberto. Even when Tommy was like twenty years old and he was at a fight with Roberto in Las Vegas. I'll never forget because Roberto was talking to someone and Tommy went up and tapped him on the shoulder. Roberto quickly backed away when he saw Tommy. It was like he saw a ghost or an evil spirit. That was Duran's role; he was the intimidator. But Tommy always possessed something, like a spiritual thing over Roberto. Roberto was always passive around him whether it was at the press conference or on the street. It was very unlike Roberto".

To Hearns, whose memory is sketchy, the hat incident seemed harmless. "It could have been true", said Hearns. "Me and Roberto were playing around and I pulled his hat down. I thought it was just build-up for the fight. I didn't look at it like it could have been something to make a man change his heart. Just playing around".

Juan Carlos Tapia concurred, "I would go running with him every morning. He was not in shape. He was intimidated by Hearns and I could tell he was not ready for that fight." Carlos Eleta recalled, "I saw him training by the TV before the Hearns fight. I said 'My god he is going to fight him like that. He cannot even fight with me.' He didn't train at all."

Others leaped to Duran's defense. "That fight should have never been made", said ex-manager Luis DeCubas. "Duran took it for the money, and he didn't train like he should haev. Duran told me personally that making weight for that fight was one of the hardest experiences of his life, but intimidated, never! That guy don't get intimidated by nobody."

 

Would you like me to go through his excuses for his fights? The list goes on and on.

 

Duran (or his fans) seem to be suffering from the Holyfield/Toney excuses syndrom. I'm glad to hear that he got down from 196lbs to 154 with only 3 weeks of training at age 33.

 

In many ways Duran had a great style top beat Hearns... He was durable, great chin, great body puncher, fantastic inside fighter and great stamina. If a prime Duran gets Tommy into the late rounds he wins the fight.

There's no doubt that Duran was there for pay cheques after Montreal. He didn't always train and was not in great shape... But he doesn't get bombed out with a single shot. He takes a lot of right hands before finally pitching down face first.

I have read a lot about this fight and I still love watching Tommy get the win as I'm a huge Hearns fan but it reminds me a bit of Nunn-Kalambay in that you could fight it a 100 times and never get the same blow out again.

 

I strongly disagree.

Duran is short, not very fast and lacks big one-punch power at that weight. I think he matches up quite horribly with Hearns and the actual fight underlines this. You say great chin and very durable, well he was out inside of two rounds.

You seem to suggest Hearns landed a lucky punch. It was anything but that.Duran simply got hammered and couldn't deal with the reach, speed and power.

 

Surprise, surprise.

 

Not at all, quite the opposite, people are suggesting Duran got taken out by a laser beam... I'm saying that Duran was getting spanked. He ate a lot of right hands in that fight. It was not a one punch KO in the way McCallum-Curry was.

The Duran who turned up to face Moore would have made it a different fight. But it's hard to argue when the result was so emphatic. People can be pretty partisan and guys like Duran and Leonard polarise fans emotionally to an extent that any discussion around circumstances are jumped on as excuses, which is why I'm loathe to go into this too much. The fight and Duran's problems with conditioning and constantly losing his grip are well documented...

Duran at his peak would have turned those physical shortcomings to his advantage. At this point he was hot and cold. I love Tommy Hearns, my favourite fighter of the 1980s but he was lucky to have fought Duran instead of McCallum. Still, Duran getting KO'd so spectacularly is one of the most memorable moments of the decade... Then, when you think back to Roberto winning the title off Buchanan all those weight classes below and years before, and you compare him to the soft-waisted drunk he'd become, lying face down on the floor, it seems rather sad.

Duran was washed up again, a joke in the boxing media. He was pretty much abused in KO magazine in the run up to Hagler-Hearns. He was urged to quit the sport. He was cast as the arch-villain and deserved more respect.

 

Hearns had the perfect style to blow Duran out the way he did.