Quote Originally Posted by Taeth
Don't get me wrong he was a great fighter(among the best). He was relatively fast, amazing chin, good boxer, and a better brawler, accurate, but besides being the best middleweight who stayed at the weight he was not the best. The fight with Duran or the fight Leonard should prove that. Leonard hadn't fought in 3 years, and still gave Hagler all he could handle. To say he could handle Roy IMO is ludicrous because Roy was way better than either Hearns and Leonard were by the time they went up to middleweight. He harder than Hearns, and he was faster than middleweight Leonard. Not only that Hearns buckled Hagler's knees, and Duran made him feel his punches so I don't see how his chin is as good as James Toney's who hasn't been hurt like Hagler was against Hearns at heavyweight against a 240 pound guy known for his punching power. I still say that if Hearns hadn't broken his hand it would have been a different fight between him and Hagler because he couldn't hit as hard after that.
The man had close to 70 pro fights and yet you choose only 2 to define him as not being great There will never be anyone who lives who, if they fight the best competition out there, will look great in every outing. Fighters have off nights like any other athletes, and the thing is, an off night will cost most champions their titles, whereas Hagler STILL won (yes, I'm one of the people who think he was robbed against SRL). And let's not forget that the Leonard fight was the man's last fight, a man who again, had almost SEVENTY pro fights. Leonard himself trained and remained in fighting condition during his entire three year hiatus, it's not like he just rolled out of bed one morning after retirement and went through a grueling training program to shave off 35 lbs then challenge Hagler. Furthermore, when you have to go through such detail as to trying to notice a time when a fighter's knees buckled, because you can't come up with anything more substantial, that alone proves the man was a machine. Like it or not, the words Hagler and overrated go together like Butterbean and graceful.