Who is the higher ATG - Leonard or Duran

haHA, leonard beat 4 greats, duran beat 1. Not that hard to pick really.

I really dont get sweet pea's argument that duran lost to every great. Whitaker would have lost to leonard, hearns and hagler quite easily. I'm sure there are lot of people that would even pick benitez to beat him. If whitaker fought leonard twice, hagler, hearns and benitez. The max i see him going is 1-5, who knows he might have even ended up 0-6 against them.

 

esteban de jesus defeated a prime duran so he is definitely a top 3 ATG.:deal

 

Leonard, and I puke in my mouth everytime that someone tries to claim that Duran is.

Leonard beat ALL 3 of the other big 4 of his era. Leonard beat Duran, Hearns, and Hagler. Duran lost too all three, and had one win over SRL. Leonard also beat Benitez.

Duran had a big run against a bunch of bartenders, and people act like he was the best ever. He even lost against the best lightweight fighter that he faced. Then as he went up in weight, he consistantly lost to te best fighters in his biggest fights, includng an embarrassing match against Leonard, when Ray made him quit, and a fight against Hearns in which he was knocked out brutally in 2 rounds. They used the excuse that Duran started out so light in weight, but fail to realize that Duran was 16 years old at the time. As he got older, he grew, matured, and moved up in weight naturally.

I have yet to hear a solid argument as to why Duran should be considered above Leonard all time.

 

Yes, Cotto and Paul Williams are his toughest fights.

 

You bet. Maybe we should have a thread. Who is greater Joppy or Leonard.

 

Williams is just a bad stylistic matchup for Mayweather , but hes not as good as Corrales in his prime , Cotto may or may not be . The only real definite claim to make Cotto and Williams a tougher fight for him than Corrales is the weight and size advantage factor really. Cotto may be a potentially great fighter , but his resume is not outstanding as of yet , Mosley is not in his prime

 

Marvin Hagler went fifteen with Duran, wheras Joppy went only three. That brings up the case that Joppy might be greater than Hagler :admin

 

Duran.

 

The vast majority of fans and historians have Duran over Leonard. Ok, Duran moved up as he got older, but he wasn't a natural middleweight or jr middleweight for that matter. You need to look at the broader picture. Duran was more active, dominated a division for 7 years, and came back from serious setbacks. He also was a multi division champion, one divison fewer than Leonard.

 

Leonard really shouldn't be recongnized as a five division weight champ because of that bogus deal against Donny LaLonde.

 

[gus21]Hands Of STONE

 

Duran dominated over a bunch of nobodies. He only had a small handful of meaningful fights at lighweight, and he lost one of them. As I said, as soon as he got into the biggest fights of his career, he lost on a regular basis. People rank him above SRL because they are biased, and SRL always gets a raw deal. Oscar De La Hoya syndrome. You achieve too much, and you are held to a different standard and discredited for everything that you do. Yet, some guy who did much less, and had less success in big fights, even against the same fighters gets more respect. Blows my mind.

 

Duran lost to all 3. Duran was also a natural Lightweight, so the fact that he was able to beat a prime Leonard and go to war with a prime Hagler at MW says enough about him. He also has wins at higher weights over Cuevas, Palomino, Barkley, and Moore. This is not taking into account his Lightweight career, where he is without question one of the best of all time. Therefore, based on his Lightweight career combined with his career at higher weights, he is up there with the others, though not based on his career at higher weights alone.

Bartenders? Just because you don't know who they were because they don't fight today, doesn't make them bartenders. Duran fought a very solid group in the LW division. He beat the best at the time, which is all you can do. Guys like Marcel, Kobayashi, Ishimatsu, Lampkin, Viruet, Bizarro, and greats like Buchanan and Dejesus are nothing to be scoffed at. You mention that he lost to the best LW he faced. Yes, an unmotivated Duran lost a non-title fight to Dejesus, and then stopped him in two rematches. So what?

This is ridiculous. Duran started out at 118, which was due to his age. His prime and natural weight was Lightweight, 135. He moved up to face the best competition, but was past his prime for most of it. No other LW in history could beat Hearns, fight that well against Hagler, or probably beat Leonard.

Let's hear a solid rebuttal to this one.

 

Joppy lost to Hopkins; who lost to Jones; who lost to Johnson; who lost to Sosa; who lost to Toney; who lost to Thadzi; who lost to Al Cole; who lost to Tim Whitherspoon; who lost to Brian Nix; who lost to Audley Harrison....

Thus surely Audley is all time Top 50!

 

Only one fighter has legitametly won titles in five different weight divisions. Floyd Mayweather. He's held WBC titles from super-featherweight to jr middleweight, also the IBF welterweight title.

Leonard winning two titles in one fight doesn't count IMO. To win titles in two different weight divisions you need to compete in two seperate fights.

Im excluding WBO of course, so Hearns and De La Hoya get four.