Why is Sugar Ray Leonard ranked so much higher than Hagler all-time?

Your math is about as good as your boxing knowledge

 

Perhaps *GASP* he considers Leonard to have beaten better versions

Nor is the rest of the world, apparently :nut

Someone like Benitez no doubt

Unlike your boys Roy and Animarl however, Leonard not only got up but got up to win almost every time. Certainly every time prime or even pre prime

 

i really dont see Ray as being a shell in the Norris fight. remember how he was picking his opponents while dissing others. he chose lalonde when he should have gone for Nunn, one of the upcoming stars. A win over Nunn would have done wonders for his rep but I personally dont think he could have pulled it off so he kept going for the older name fighters-safe opponents stationary, sluggish, lethargic.

In the last one with Duran his legs were in great shape and he lookeddominant for 12 so how in the world could leonard be close to shot?

Hagler on the other hand was deterriorating before my eyes in the Mugabi fight. just looking at his beat up face aftewards made me cringe as i thought how much longer could he possibly last? This was confirmed as I watched his sparring sessions the month before the leonard farce

so I was right in suspecting he was at the end. i think that's why he didnt have any more fights.

With leonard it was a different story. he was beaten up and humiliated and didnt want to show his face again

 

But his (SRL's) 154 title wasn't cheap because SRL was almost definitely the best 154 pound fighter in the world. It's not like when Jones cherry-picked Ruiz because he could not have beaten the other Heavyweight champs.

Lalonde I grant you. SRL probably wouldn't have wanted to fight some of the tougher light heavyweights.

But SRL was definitely one of the greatest fighters I've ever seen. Hagler was great too.

 

It wasn't???

 

I think Leonard's dismantling of Benitez is the most impressive perfomance I've ever seen. And I'm a Ali nut-hugger of cosmic proportions :nut . It was just complete in every aspect.

 

No. It was Hagler who did

 

You still around here talking complete nonsense.

 

How can he be taking it too far rating Hagler over Leonard? Marvin had more than twice the defenses and twice the fights and beat Hearns in 1/3 the time. Hagler was never embarrassed lke Leonard or repeatedly floored as Leonard was nor was he knocked out like Leonard.

I dont understand how Leonard can be ranked higher because he won a split decision over a shot Hagler while Norris who outright creamed leonard gets dissed by fans in denial. How is a split decision better than a shutout?

I see Pacfan has chosen to ignore responding to my questions which means he bailed out.

I think Leonard has a long way to go before solidifying his greatness. In fact I wrote an article titled "What Ray Leonard must do to certify his greatness"

The way I see it, the wins over Hearns and Duran was just the beginning. Beating a blown up lightweight in his 14th year at pro doesnt prove that much. He would need a string of defenses at 147 against some capable challengers to go along with it including Curry and also accept a challenge of Pryor. He didnt do that.

Following that he'd have to step up and rematch with prime Hearns which I feel would fail. This would be his second loss. Forget about a fight with Hagler. It would be Hearns that would then be matched up with Marvin.

As for Leonard, I feel his career would for the most part be over but could still pick up some paydays against McCallum and Nunn. he would lose those bouts as well.

 

Carles when you think about it there really wasnt that much at 147 at the time. Colin Jones would get busted up by someone like Leonard. he'd be wasting his time on him. You can forget mcCrory. Curry is decent but nothing great.

All the talent was really at 154 and 160, divisions that Leonard wanted no part of

 

Well it's not as if Leonard upped and ran away from 147 or avoided fledglings like McCrory and Curry. Eye worries stopped him fighting for more than two years and then her didn't fight for another 3. He then came back to conquer his own greatest ambition in Hagler. After spending ages building up he was hardly going back down to 147.

Even if he'd kept fighting tho Leonard was never staying long at 147 - he had bigger fish to fry and a stronger impact to make on history. He was one of these fighters not content to sit idle, he actively chased bigger and better. There was nobody left to beat immediately in his division anyway. He'd beaten Benitez, Duran and Hearns, Cuevas was done, McCrory and Curry were yet to make their mark and he did actually sign to fight Pryor before retiring. If he stayed at 147 he'd now be criticised for not chasing bigger prey.

 

Ray had better names on his record, won titles in various weight divisions and also came out of retirement to take the title from Hagler. (Yes I beleive SRL deserved the win). Im also a Hagler fan.

Although there is a few stand out wins in his reign like Antfermo, Hearns, Mugabi, I dont think his middleweight division was as blessed with talent as people remember. People look back think of the names of the famous four, but 3 of the famous four were not natural middleweights.

Imo the 90s was by far the more superior middleweight era, but due to the inagraul 168lb division and a fractured ABC titles, they didnt all fight each other. It seemed the Americans for the most part stayed in America and the British for the most part stayed in Britain. In the 90s we had titlists and contenders which included Nunn, Toney, Hopkins, Roy Jones, Eubank, Benn, Graham, Watson, McCallum, Collins, Jackson, McClellan, Johnson etc and just south of middle we had guys like Simon Brown and Terry Norris...but yet its the 80s where we had a great middleweight era..?

 

there you go again with the 'eye worries'. Why continue with this charade isnt it time to put this rumour to rest?