Quote Originally Posted by electivemed View Post
I'm telling you strategy that many experts also agree with. Hearns could have boxed circles around Hagler. This whole Hearns couldnt keep Leonard or Hagler off of him is way off base. Hearns fought Hagler with poor judgement and poor strategy. The Leonard fights Hearns held Leonard at bay until he ran out of gas in fight 1 then in fight 2 he beat Leonard up pretty bad. Vegas jobed Hearns in fight 2. I dont know where you going with this "couldnt keep them off of him" routine??

If Hearns boxes Hagler and also has a chance to set up on him he wins.............. also if Hagler wanted to bull rush again Hearns wouldnt infight with him. The science is called "tying up your man" But you believe only Hagler had this mystic ability to learn from mistakes (like the fight where Duran made Haglers face look like pancake batter after 15 rounds)

I like hagler but he got what he deserved in the long run......... He cried like a "lil bitch" after the Leonard fight........also turn around is fair play....... Leonard never gave him a rematch-just like Hagler never gave Hearns a rematch.........The difference is Hearns and Leonard went on to win several more world championships and Hagler became an actor and quit boxing. If hagler had any balls he would have rematched Hearns after the Leonard fight.......the winner would have gotten Leonard.

Instead Hagler showed his true character after he made some money and quit.

History will show it was Hearns and Leonard as the cream of the crop of that era. hagler will be an enigma.........and he brought that on himself.................

History shows Leonard and Hagler as the cream of the crop of that era, since they're the ones with winning records in the Hearns/Leonard/Duran/Hagler big-4. Hearns should have gotten the decision against Leonard in the second fight, but that would still leave him at 2-2; Hagler was 2-1 and Leonard would have been 3-2 even had the second Hearns fight gone against him. And, of course, Hagler and Leonard didn't get knocked out by the likes of Iran Barkley.

The "couldn't keep him them off of him" routine is pretty self-explanatory. On three separate occasions in his relative prime (from just before his 23rd birthday to age 29) Hearns fought pressure fighters who could take a punch and bang back, and he got knocked out by three of them. So it's a bit counterintuitive to expect that he would have won, and the guy who NEVER got knocked out, would have been knocked out in a second fight. You can say he would have "boxed circles around" Leonard in '81 or Barkley in '88, too. And in Leonard's case, he did for quite a few rounds. But he didn't make it to the final bell in any of those fights. In fact, in two of them, he didn't make it to the 4th round.

Criticizing his strategy after the fact is just Monday morning quarterbacking, no matter how many "experts" do it. It's like calling a fake punt bold and genius if it works, or stupid if it doesn't. You can always say it was wrong after it doesn't work. He had three superfights before Hagler - he slugged it out with Duran and Cuevas and won in spectacular fashion; he tried to box Leonard, and he got knocked out. So when he took on Hagler, he adopted the strategy that he had the most success with in the past - the best defense is a good offense. It worked against Duran; it didn't work against Hagler. If he had adopted your suggested strategy and lost in the late rounds, you'd be on the board saying, "That was a stupid fight plan. He should have slugged it out like he did against Duran."