“Four Kings” Dream Fights: Roberto Duran Vs Manny Pacquiao – Fight 4

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By Roy “Sharpshooter” Bennett

An ex girlfriend wondering out loud once asked me why boxing fans are so obsessed with mythical match ups between boxers from different eras? To add insult to injury she then made the point that basketball fans didn’t argue about whether the 1950 Minneapolis Lakers could have beaten the 2014 San Antonio Spurs in the NBA playoffs, even though they were both championship winning teams. My jaw dropped. So I went to get a beer from the refrigerator and gather my thoughts. This was clearly not the woman for me. She was beautiful and she was intelligent but she had to go. She didn’t understand that mythical match ups were the ultimate indulgence for boxing fans. When normal people had their backs turned, diehard fans of pugilism like to argue the merits of Joe Louis over Muhammad Ali or Harry Greb over Carlos Monzon, among others. Short of having two boxers at the same weight doing great things in the same era who eventually fight, like Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns did at welterweight in 1981, mythical match ups were the next best thing. It is our right as boxing fans to break the rules of time, to leap across the ages, and match our favorite fighters against each other in their athletic primes. It is our guilty pleasure. But wait… It’s not as simple as it sounds. You’ve got to qualify why you’re batting for one boxer over another. It’s the unwritten “Golden Rule” of partaking in any mythical match up discussions. You have to be prepared to put up a good argument as to why your guy would smoke the opposition. You’ve got to know your fighter’s strengths and weaknesses. You’ve got to know what made him special and what chinks he had in his armor. “Sure that fighter could punch but he hated training.”

Know your fighter. Or get the hell out of Dodge. If you’re misinformed or, worse, uninformed you could be the one getting smoked. There are a lot of people out there, ex fighters, trainers, record keepers, writers, and historians, among them, inhabiting the Internet boxing forums and group pages who are hardcore boxing heads who the term “Expert” truly applies to, and in the game of show and tell, they will rip you to shreds if you’re unable to present a coherent argument. But I get it. They see it as their duty to protect the history of the sport from what I term as the, “Reality TV crowd.” Those misguided individuals who want to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator.

They will try to argue that Mike Tyson is the greatest heavyweight to ever walk the face of the earth. But yet none of them can qualify why they believe that to be the case without sounding foolish, because the evidence to support such an outlandish claim is simply not to be found in Tyson’s body of professional work. But as objective as we try to be, when it really boils down to it the fight game pulls at every human emotion. Joy, pride, disappointment, anger, and everything in-between. It sometimes divides fans along national or ethnic lines. It lifts us up to dizzying heights and it drags us down into depressing lows. But boxing fans are like jilted lovers who keep coming back for that intense make up sex. Yeah, I said it. For us it’s the hope we’ll see that next Fight of the Year” or the “Super Fight” that surpasses all expectations. We’re hooked on it and can’t stay away. We’re tied to the fighters we grew up watching. The music we listened to, the clothes we wore. The boxers we followed. All conjure up certain feelings. A bit like the smell of freshly baked bread might invoke a memory of a childhood moment at the family dining table. So, join me as I continue the mythical match up tradition by pitting the “Four Kings,” Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Roberto Duran against four of today’s best. All fights are scheduled for the championship distance of 15 rounds. You read that right.

And we’re going with same day weigh-ins too. None of this putting on twenty pounds over night nonsense. If any of these rules upset you, you’re watching the wrong sport. Go watch Ping Pong instead. There’s no political correctness here. This is the hardest game there is. Heavyweight Champion Joe Frazier said it best, “Boxing is the only game where you can get your brain shook, your money took, and your name in the undertaker’s book.” I’ve seen many heated arguments on the boards and forums over the years between fans of different fighters and when it comes to mythical match ups things sometimes tend toward the ultra serious with neither side willing to budge in the discussion. So, in the spirit of injecting a little light heartedness into the proceedings I’m going to use a few quotes from the Rocky movies to describe a certain energy around each fight. So get your hands up and your mouthpiece in. Here we go. “Ding Ding”.

 “You see that look in their eyes Rock? When we fought I trained hard but I didn’t have that look in my eyes!  You had it and you won. Eye of the Tiger, man. Eye of the Tiger.” — Apollo Creed

Legend has it that when he was fifteen years old Roberto Duran knocked down a horse. Let that marinate for a minute. A horse! He was poor and didn’t have the money he needed to attract a girl he liked. He won a few coins for the feat. I’ve never quite seen a fighter like him. Duran was ferocity incarnate. The raven haired, snarling wolf, with the predatory killer instinct. He was the living epitome of machismo in a Latino fighter. He came at you like he wanted to kill you but in the midst of that terrible pressure he brought to bear on his opponents he had great skill. His remains one of the best body punching attacks you will ever see and he carried knockout power in both fists. He wasn’t called “Manos De Piedra,” (Hands of Stone) for nothing.

He had every punch in the book, a great inside game, and a very underrated defense. He moved his head to make you miss or to take the sting off the opponent’s punches and because his balance was so good he was viper quick with his counterattacks. Southpaws never bothered him. Manny Pacquiao, 57-6-2, 38 KO’s, is a blazingly fast southpaw with unorthodox footwork and a left hand from hell. He made beating bigger fighters that stood in from of him the new Gold Standard of entertainment for the last fourteen years and brought a lot of new casual fans to the sport in the process. But a peak Roberto Duran was no stationary target and he was tremendously strong with it.

Even when he moved up to challenge Ray Leonard, at welterweight, in 1980 he surprised the defending champion by manhandling Leonard on the inside. No one expected that. Least of all Leonard. Duran, 103-16, 70 KO’s, would look to attack the body early and rough Pacquiao up on the inside. Pacquiao would have to fight on the retreat and try to catch Duran coming in. Easier said than done as Duran’s head movement and perpetual motion made him very difficult to time with counter shots. As Duran beings to ratchet up the pressure and punch output, Pacquiao is forced to throw caution to the wind to prevent being overwhelmed. By the fourth frame Duran is banging hard to the body and Pacman is shipping heavy punishment to the head. He’s getting trapped on the ropes for long periods because he doesn’t have the strength or inside game to stave off Duran’s marauding attacks.

Pacquiao manages to land a couple of left hands but Duran’s manages to take the heat off them by pulling back just enough to render them harmless. Pacquiao is all marked up entering the 6th stanza and Duran goes in for the kill . A barrage of punches against the ropes ending with a right hook to the pit of Pacquiao’s stomach sends him down for the count writhing on the canvas. This one is a wrap. The Panamanian fans are ecstatic and during the post fight interview Duran calls out Floyd Mayweather, JR., grabs his crotch and sneers into the camera. In the cameraman’s earpiece someone shouts, “Pan left!” Too late. So there you have it. In an era where the top fighters hide behind their promotional affiliations and make endless excuses not to fight one another, mythical match ups are the way to keep ourselves entertained while we wait for the big fights to eventually happen.

Now what about Matthew Saad Muhammad Vs Sergey Kovalev? Who do you have?

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