Hagler faced the better competition and had better skills. Those traits would have better carry over if he had moved up in weight.
Both Monzon & Hagler were perfect MW's....and they get thrown in with 2 of the Top 3/4 Ltheavies of all time?
Yeah, kind of expecting a bit much and stretching it, isn't it? People forget the likes of Zarate against Gomez, and then Gomez against Sanchez... Some of the greatest destroyers of all time were halted dead in their tracks when trying to move up a scant few pounds, none the less the old school, titanic leap between middleweight and light heavyweight.
To be honest I wouldnt give either Hagler or Monzon much chance at all if any ofbeating Foster or Spinks. Foster was actually a fair bit faster than Monzon and had a better jab so Carlos is in deep doodoo. The only thing Carlos had over Sheriff Bob was his chin and ring intelligence. Hagler at 5 ft 9 vs the extremely versatile, intelligent and powerful 6 ft 2 and a half inch tall Mike Spinks is also a bit of a mismatch. In reality not that many world champion middleweights have gone up to 175 and been the undisputed best at that weight. I would also suggest that all the modern examples used " sports science " to assist the transition up in weight. Bob Fitzsimmons, D ick Tiger, Roy Jones and Bernard Hopkins are the only guys who could claim to be the best middleweight and best light heavyweight in the world I can think of. There have other middleweight champions like Reggie Johnson, Mike McCallum etc who won a version of the 175 lb crown but they were never considered the main man at that weight. Cheers All.
