Let me say this up front - I like boxing, but I probably shouldn't. I recognize the inherent danger of the sport. I'm aware of the barbarism of the sport. I know that despite all the talk about the "Sweet Science", a boxer at his core is a person who beats people up for a living. I know fighters wind up brain damaged and can occasionally die in the ring. However, I love watching the old fights that gave Ali Parkinson's Syndrome, and I rooted for Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini both before and after the fight that killed Duk Koo Kim. I would never approve of my 2 sons becoming boxers, yet I've spent many hours watching other people's sons put themselves at risk in the ring. There's no getting around it - I'm a Grade A hypocrite when it comes to boxing. However, I can't deny how watching a great fight makes me feel. The sport probably should be outlawed ( and I would vote to outlaw it if it ever appeared on a ballot ), but I can't resist watching a great fight.
All that being said, I almost never watch boxing these days. The best fighters don't fight each other nearly enough ( it's a crying shame that Mayweather/Pacquiao never happened ), and I've seen far too many fishy/incompetent/inexplicable decisions from boxing judges over the years. To be honest, I don't even think about boxing more than a few times a year.
So, why I am dedicating a blog post to boxing? Well, it all has to do with a documentary I watched last Sunday night. ESPN ran a documentary called "No Mas" about the Leornard/Duran rivalry, and it got me thinking about Welterweight/Middleweight boxing Renaissance of the 80's. Back in days of the great heavyweight void between Ali and Tyson ( Larry Holmes was a great champ ( Better overall than Tyson, and I think he would have given Tyson a run for his money if they had fought each other in their respective primes ), but he was not an exciting fighter. ), 4 fighters owned the decade. Those fighters were Roberto Duran, Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Tommy Hearns.
Throughout the 80's, each of these 4 fighters fought the other 3 in a round-robin for the ages. I watched all of those fights, and since then I've had plenty of internal debates about where those 4 fighters should be ranked relative to each other. I figured it might be fun to share my thoughts in a blog post.
Before revealing my rankings, I'd like my make few qualifying remarks about Roberto Duran. I did a "Hagler Hearns Duran Leonard" Google search to find the picture at the top of this post, and upon doing that search it became clear that lots of other folks had taken the time to compare/contrast/rank these 4 fighters ( There's even a book on the subject called "Four Kings" and a documentary called "The Fabulous Four".). The vast majority of boxing enthusiasts have Duran ranked at the top of the list. The reasons people usually give for ranking Duran first are as follows:
1) He had a dominant Lightweight career in the 70's before joining the Welterweight and Middleweight ranks in the 80's.
2) He was older than the other 3 ( about 3 years older than Hagler, 5 years older than Leonard, and 7 years older than Hearns ) and was already 29 when he and Leonard kicked off the round-robin in June of 1980. He was certainly past his prime for most of the 80's.
3) He was a natural Lightweight ( He fought 72 fights primarily as a Lightweight before moving up to the Welterweight division to face Leonard in 1980. He went 71 -1 in those fights, his only loss coming in a 1972 non-title fight in which he temporarily moved up to the Light Welterweight division. ) who had to move up to the Welterweight and Middleweight divisions to fight Leornard/Hearns/Hagler. He fought all his fights in the 80's against naturally bigger men.
When you add all that up, I can see why most people believe Duran had a better career than the other members of the "Fabulous Four". However, in this piece, I'm only going to judge Duran in the context of the Fabulous Four rivalry ( BTW, nobody called these guys the "Fabulous Four" back in the day. However, it seems like plenty of folks refer to that group by that name today, so I'll go with it. ). Thus, I'm not going to consider his Lightweight record at all. I'll give him some credit for being older and smaller than the other guys in the group, but I'll mostly judge him by how he looked in the ring against the other 3 guys.
I'm going to start by ranking each fighter on a 1 to 4 scale ( 1 being the best of the group - 4 being the worst ) in 3 attributes:
Skill: Pure boxing skill - the ability the land punches and defend oneself independent of punching power.
Power: Punching power - The ability to knock another guy out.
Chin: The ability to take a punch and avoid getting knocked out. The attribute also includes "heart", the ability get off the canvas after being knocked down and continue fighting when hurt.
So, based on what I watched in the 80's, here are my rankings:
| Skill | Power | Chin | |
| Duran | 2 | 4 | 3 |
| Hagler | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Hearns | 4 | 1 | 4 |
| Leonard | 1 | 3 | 2 |
After much thought, I've decided on the following overall rankings:
4) Tommy Hearns
There's a reason why they called him "The Hitman". He's probably the greatest pound-for-pound puncher I've ever seen. He knocked Duran old cold in the 2nd round of their fight, the only time Duran went down for the count in his 119 career fights. He was by far the most exciting of the 4 fighters. You never wanted to miss a second of a Tommy Hearns fight, because you always knew somebody might be hitting the canvas at any time. Unfortunately, sometimes Tommy would be the one hitting the floor. He certainly didn't have a terrible chin, but compared to the other guys on this list, he had a glass jaw. If I could have given him a "Chin" ranking of 5, I would have.
3) Roberto Duran
2) Sugar Ray Leonard
The was never a doubt in my mind that I'd be rating Hagler 1st on this list, but I had a hard time deciding whether Duran or Leonard should be be ranked 2nd. Rating one guy 3rd and the other 2nd second doesn't do justice to how close these guys are in my mind. These guys are ranked so close together in my mind, that you would have a hard time sliding a sheet of paper between them. Duran's an all-time great fighter, so it pains me to ranks him 3rd on any list of 4 fighters, but ultimately my Duran/Leonard ranking came down to two word: "No mas".
Now, I know some might think it's unfair to hold that one moment against Duran, but I think "No mas" is more than just about a single moment. Duran has insisted for more than 30 years that he quit because of stomach cramps ( though he initial claimed he injured his shoulder ) that were the result of overeating he had done between the weigh-in and the fight. Even if we take what he said at face value, I don't think the stomach cramps excuse absolves him of any blame for the loss. It's common knowledge that after beating Leonard in their first fight, Duran partied and ate like there was no tomorrow. In the months that followed a fight where he weighed-in at 147 pounds, he ballooned to more than 200 pounds. After the Duran/Leonard rematch was arranged, he had to train like a madman to loose all that weight. As the weigh-in approached he was popping diuretics like candy in order to make the weight, and after the the weigh-in he ate like a glutton in an attempt to regain his strength. With all that in mind, it's certainly plausible that he had very bad stomach cramps during the Duran/Leonard II. However, he only has himself to blame for any stomach cramps he felt that night. Part of being great at any sport is being dedicated to your craft. Part of being great at any sport, is having respect for that sport. Duran's defeat of Leonard was the greatest moment of his career, and certainly had the right to be ecstatic and celebrate a bit. However, to get as out of shape as he did when he knew a rematch was inevitable, show a disrespect for the sport of boxing.
Duran was great in his first fight with Leonard and certainly could have beaten Leonard again if he had been in shape for their rematch ( However, it's far from a foregone conclusion that an in-shape Duran would have beaten Leonard in the rematch. The judges certainly got the decision right in the first Duran/Leonard fight, but Leonard was coming on really strong in the last 3 rounds of that fight. The fight was as close as the scorecards indicated, and if he could have fought for a few more rounds, Leonard might have come out on top. Of course, both men knew the fight was only 15 rounds. Leonard only has himself to blame for not taking the fight to Duran sooner ( and Duran has to be given a lot of credit for intimidating Leonard early in the fight) , but it's to clear to anyone who watched the fight that Duran won but Leonard proved he had would have a chance to beat Duran in the inevitable rematch. ). However, given Duran a pass for losing the rematch because he was out of shape would be the equivalent of giving Peyton Manning a pass for losing the Super Bowl this coming Sunday because he spent all his time in NYC getting drunk in bars rather than studying his playbook. The bottom line is that Duran/Leonard II should have been a great fight, but Duran robbed fight fans of this by not being in shape. This will always be a black mark on his record, and it's a black mark against him in these rankings.
All that aside, it's not clear that Duran did enough in the 80's to be ranked ahead of Leonard. He was 1-3 in the round-robin ( BTW, his 1-3 record doesn't include his loss in Duran/Leonard III. I'm not counting that fight because Duran was 38 and was completey washed-up ) and was the only fighter not to score a knockout in the round-robin. His lack of knockouts is why I've ranked Mr. "Hands of Stone" 4th in the "Power" category. While there's no shame in not being able to knock out great fighters like Hagler/Hearns/Leonard, it is worth noting that Duran only had 2 knockouts in the 7 fights after fighting Leonard and before fighting Hagler. He simply didn't have elite punching power as a Welterweight or Middleweight. Leonard wasn't a power puncher either, but you've got to given him credit for his dramatic 14th round TKO on Hearns in their 1981 "Showdown". Some may also also be surprised that I gave pretty-boy Leonard a better "Chin" rating than legendary tough guy Duran, but it can't be ignored that Leonard spent 26 rounds in the ring with "Hitman" Hearns without getting knocked out while Duran got knocked out cold by Hearns in the 2nd round of their fight. The "No mas" moment also loses Duran a lot of points in the "heart" component of the "Chin" category.
Finally, it's instructive to look at Duran and Leonard's common opponents. Leonard fared much better against Hearns than Duran, did slightly better than Duran against Hagler ( although despite what the scorecards said, Leornard certainly did not beat Hagler - more on that below ), and beat the great Wilfred Benitez while Duran lost to him.
The main reason this ranking was very close was that Duran was unquestionably better than Leonard when the fought each other at the height of their powers in their first fight. I also have to given Duran some credit for being older and naturally smaller than Leonard. However, Leornard had a far better career in the 80's, and "No mas" gives Leonard the #2 ranking in a razor-thin split decision.
1) Marvin Hagler
There is was never any doubt in my mind that Hagler would be #1 on this list. His only loss in the round-robin was to Leonard, but he only lost that fight due to the remarkable coincidence that the only 2 people in the world who thought Leornard won that fight happened to be 2 of the 3 judges for the fight.
If you don't believe me, go watch the fight yourself. Leonard had a brilliant fight plan ( get on his horse to stay away from Hagler's power for the first 2:30 or each round and then rally late in the last 30 seconds of the round to impress the judges and "steal" the round ) and employed all the fighting skills that gave him my #1 ranking in the "Skills" category. He fought Hagler as well as anyone ever had, but I'll never believe that he won. He spent most of the fight moving backwards, and he never even came close to hurting Hagler. As I said at the beginning of this piece, boxing is essentially a brutal sport, and the primary goal of any boxer should be to hurt his opponent. If a boxer can't manage to hurt his opponent in a fight, I can't give him the decision in that fight. Hagler was the clear aggressor in his fight with Leonard, and did manage to hurt Leonard when Leonard wasn't running away from him. No serious boxing fan really believes that Leonard won that fight
Perhaps I'm biased because by the time the Leonard/Hagler fight happened I was already convinced Hagler was the best pound-for-pound fighter I had ever seen ( However, my bias would have been tempered by the fact that I was a big fan of Leonard and I was rooting for Leonard to win the fight. I wanted Leonard to win, but I never really believed he did ). Hagler called himself "Marvelous Marvin Hagler", but "Marvelous" doesn't begin to describe the kind of fighter he was. The man was an absolute bad-ass. The man was practically indestructible. I never saw him get seriously hurt in a fight, and I couldn't even conceive of him ever getting hurt in the ring. Hearns hit him with shots that would have floored 95% of Heavyweights and Hagler just shook off all those shots and knocked Hearns out in the 3rd round.
In 1986 Hagler fought John "The Beast" Mugabi. If you've never seen Mugabi fight, just picture a real-life Middleweight version of the Clubber Lang character from Rocky III. Mugabi was 26-0 with 26 knockouts prior to his fight with Hagler. He looked like an unstoppable knockout machine. Hagler was in the tail end of his career while Mugabi was 6 years younger and in his prime. If anybody was ever going to overpower Hagler, it would have been Mugabi. They had a brutal fight with Mugabi landing many crushing blows, but the Unstoppable Force eventually succumbed to the the Immovable Object when Hagler knocked out Mugabi in the 11th.
I could go on and on, but just watch the Hagler fights in the links above and you'll get the idea. Despite what Mike Tyson used to claim, Marvin Hagler was truly "The baddest man on the planet". Certainly not the biggest, and certainly not the strongest, but definitely the baddest. Nobody remotely close to his weight class could have handled Hagler during his heyday in the 80's. You can have your Roy Jones Jr.s, your Floyd Mayweathers, your Julio Cesar Chavezes, and your Manny Pacquiaos. The best pound-for-pound fighter I've ever seen is Marvin Hagler.
I'd Iike to dedicate this post to my grandfather. He was the biggest boxing fan I've ever known, and he taught me how to throw a 3-punch combination ( "Jab, jab, [throws the right hand] bing!" ) when I was barely out of diapers. We watched a lot of those 80s fights together. I'm not sure he would have agreed with all my rankings, but I'm sure would have been happy to know that his grandson still cared enough about boxing to write this post.
Rich
P.S. This is off-topic, but considering the Super Bowl is in 2 days, I might as well make a prediction:
Seahawks 24
Broncos 19
( I see the Seahawks with a 24-13 lead late in the game. The Broncos score a TD late, go for two and fail. OK, that's an ultra-specific prediction, but I would be a bit surprised if the Broncos manage to win. )
