All great performances but for me it has to be Duran vs Leonard in Montreal, an ATG putting in his best shift ever vs a fellow ATG who also put in one of his best shifts... 2 top 10 (IMO) fighters in their prime facing off. The heart & skill both men showed was outstanding & the variety of punching & outright will of Roberto Duran was something to behold. For those idiots that doubt Duran`s greatness in his prime, watch this fight, this was the last of the real Duran. Amazing. :good
although i didnt think Ray Leonard won. I think his is the best performance. Ray was coming off a 3 year break was a ex WW world champion and in his last fight had struggled with a less than top class fighter. And he was going to be challenging arguably the best ever Middleweight (albeit slightly past his prime.) Ray put on a brilliant performance and in my opinion just lost but that aint bad.
I felt leonard lost so that rules that one out and although it was a great performance from Duran Leonard fought a pretty dumb fight, whereas Frazier fought his greatest performance and was perfect.
I actually think Leonard beat Hagler 7-5 but I still went with Duran`s victory for the simple reason that Leonard was prime, Frazier was prime when he beat a rusty Ali, both Hagler & Leonard were past their best but I too loved SRLs performance in this one so dont mind this pick. Its really just the prime thing that swings it for Duran for me TBH, I cant think of any other fighter in that time frame that could have beat that version of Leonard, Duran had to put in his greatest, most flawless shift & he did exactly that. I wont use Duran jumping from LWT as a bonus point because IMO he was a solid WWT for almost 2 yrs & was ready for Leonard since the Palomino fight a whole year before he fought Ray IMHO. :good
All things considered: 1st - Duran v Leonard 2nd - Frazier v Ali 3rd - Leonard v Hagler I rate Leonard v Hagler very very highly as a win, but nowhere near as highly as the other two as a performance. No Ali-Foreman option?
Sugar Ray Leonard Vs Marvelous Marvin Hagler (1987) The other 2 fights were suposed to be compitive fights this one was not. Hagler was susposed to walk through Ray Leonard. It was a close fight which I have Leonard winning 115-113. Being that he was such a huge underdog I might have voted for Leonard's preformance over the other two choices even if he had lost.
Probably easier picking your favourite child than splitting this lot. It's the man who took 'The Greatest's' zero away for mine, but only by a whisker!
