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EPISODE: Episode 28
The awesome Post-Ali era featured The Fab Four, which developed epic rivalties, such as Roberto Duran versus Sugar Ray Leonard, and their second fight is the subject of this episode. Watch The Scoop from Monday to Friday featuring Canadian heavyweight champ Bola Ray, who lends his vast experience in the sport and provides his comments boxing – its history and future – on YouTube and TalkinFight.com/live. #boxinghistory @Roberto Duran @sugarrayleonard
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Transcribed:
[, Music, ], hey good evening talk and fight fans around the world.
Welcome once again to another episode of the scoop featuring the champ bola ray and he’s continuing a great fantastic series on great fights, great fighters.
Great everything it’s great.
This is great.
It’S just great and that’s the scoop um well before their first fight.
The tension could be seen with the naked eye.
At least it seemed that way.
Um neither fighter had any love lost for the other post fight interview depicted a defeated, but gracious leonard eager to for a rematch and an understandably jubilant duran, welcoming the very same rematch.
How did round two of this trilogy go? What was the venom still hot and spraying from the combatants uh? What mental chess game was the order of the day? This time my name is bala raymond wally, and this is the scoop as seen in their first encounter.
The mental game is equally as important as the physical one when it comes to the outcome of of uh a boxing match in their first dance.
Duran wanted to enrage leonard to the point where his emotions would take over and cause him to make critical mistakes.
It worked to perfection leonard made the monolithic mistake of prepping.
So like we’re talking pre-fight strategy, he was prepping first for a scenario that he would beat.
Arguably the very best in many people’s eyes at um inside fighter of all time.
Add an inside fight, wow leonard, changed his game plan completely this time at the pre-fight interviews.
Leonard, would completely deflect anything called aggression against duran and played this humble yet complimentary game.
He would in essence, just talk about how he’s excited for the fight.
You know, like he’s a worthy champion, you know he’s he’s he’s amazing this then the next thing and completely diffuse every all the machismo.
I i i i i bet his duran’s estrogen levels went up from the sweetness that sugar was giving them at the fight.
Uh ray charles leonard’s namesake ray charles, he sang the national anthem, which was a surprise to ray and completely unexpected, and he was actually a little bewildered.
Um leonard felt that this was a sign that he was to be victorious this night round.
One leonard fought on his bike.
He just he was on his toes.
He was emulating his two idols in ray robinson and muhammad ali flicking sticking.
What have you while duran couldn’t cut off the ring draen i had decent footwork, but he wasn’t exceptional at it um.
He was, he was competent, um minimalistic almost but competent still moving well, but you had ray cutting angles back and forth back and forth.
He didn’t have that.
He didn’t he didn’t desire that he didn’t fight that style.
Duran’S attempts to grapple and fight on the inside, but it just didn’t work this time ray just his game plan was completely different.
Um ray would bring big punch combinations, especially uh um, utilizing his in ridiculously fast hands um, and then he did something completely different than what he did the first fight in that he would look for a way out.
He’D shoot off roll off spin off and get to the center of the ring where he would then get back on his bike and he was floating dancing.
Dancing ray changed his strategy from the last fight because it made no sense to sit there and endure or more importantly, give duran the opportunities to let well let his offense off this novi.
This nullified duran’s ability to pin ray up against the ropes and do his body assault like he did last fight um around the fifth and sixth round leonard’s movement increased now uh the dancing was pretty much constant with the side and side movement which frustrated duran.
To no end now, jiren just kept plotting after raymie with little success and try to tie him up with that being said, grant did win the fifth round um due to rey’s lack of punch, count, he was dancing and but he didn’t throw many punches and angela Dundee raised trainer said so in the corner.
Now, larry controlled control of his range was nothing shy, spectacular.
He um.
This is in the seventh round and was also one of the key components that frustrated duran.
You have to understand something: um, okay, the average man fingertip to fingertip wingspan is their height.
Okay, it’s supposed to be equal to your height, ray leonard was 510.
His wingspan was six foot.
Two duran was five seven.
His wingspan was five six.
This style of fighting that ray adopted for this fight only made sense.
He would touch him from a distance and he was gone.
He just kept him at the end at the end of his punches.
If he, if dread, dare get close, he’d flurry and then he’d bounce he’s gone.
This was the round where rey was actually taunting leonard.
I mean uh duran leonard outbox duran from the outside, and it seemed like a no-brainer like that’s what you seriously wondered what he was thinking.
The first time like it just seemed just so natural now duran obviously was not accustomed to this showboating.
He got nullified.
He like he he was.
He was nothing shy of embarrassed.
It was evident that durant just couldn’t find him.
He made duran so furious that duran start chanting come on fight fight like stand still, so i can hit you sort of thing but ray just spun off.
He anytime duran would charge in he would spin off like a like a matador and he was gone.
He completely and utterly humiliated direct nobody in 72, fights or 73 fights for that matter had ever done anything remotely close to this to the legendary durant.
He was utterly embarrassed he actually caught around with a bowler punch and then he actually fainted and duran was actually reacting to the faints like this is ridiculous, like you’re talking about this isn’t supposed to happen to somebody of this pedigree and rey.
Was that amazing that he was able to do that? I truly believe that this is the round that destroyed duran.
He had never been in the ring with anybody who could nullify him like this, and the part that gets me confuses me is that this was genuinely the blueprint moving up in weight loss going up against taller fighters.
This was the blueprint of how to beat durant simple, don’t let him close to you and yet very few very.
He found a great deal of success throughout the latter part of his career round.
Eight drag came out, but without anything called fury that he was revered for followed, leonard and ray danced around.
You know a minor exchanges, there’s three opportunities when um an inside fight could have begun, but duran pretty much passively allowed him to spin out and walk away into the center of the ring.
At 2, 44 of the eighth round, duran turned his back, waved his hand and said the iconic, no mass, no more.
In the post fight interview in duran’s change room.
He claimed that he got cramps in his upper body that then moved into his arms, and that is why he quit, but then he then announced his retirement from boxing ourselves.
Duran’S trainer said he doesn’t recall duran, making any claims of cramps going on during the fight.
All he remembers is duran saying his arm was feeling stiff.
Now this another person in in duran’s corner verified that yeah.
He actually did say he was feeling cramped not only that there was a picture that was posted clear across the world of duran in the seventh round, with an ice pack in the corner on his upper upper torso.
There are a few more variables that once you take into consideration when evaluating um the fight and the merits of the combatants, the ring was slightly bigger than the first time and for the record, i’m not say, are giving any excuses for either fighter.
I’M just putting out the facts.
The ring was seen as larger than the one in montreal this one was 21 by 21 feet, the one in montreal it was 20 feet.
Is it monolithic indifference? No, but was it notable very much so? Secondly, the three judges at ringside we’re all european, so they would appreciate more of a purist boxing style as opposed to draen’s gritty banging inside fighting styles.
Now that was null and void because jiren didn’t finish the right.
The fight and didn’t go to the scorecards dren need to stop leonard to win that fight um, and that was that was pretty much the the scenario they were gon na.
They were gon na, make it difficult for him, but again, i think, leonard, more than showcased a brill his brilliance by winning the fight the way he did um what a fight, what what? What an absolutely amazing series they all they actually went on to fight.
One more time a trilogy and in this fight, uh leonard, pretty much did what leonard was supposed to do, and two of the three judges gave him all 12 rounds because he just stayed away from and boxing from the outside there was no need to he.
He had the blueprint on how to beat the man it was.
It was boxing he was boxing um.
The two men now are enjoying their retirement and they’re actually really good friends.
You would never have known it during this fight, but that’s what boxing does it makes brothers out of warriors out of combatants? So if you like this episode, please smash the like button hit subscribe and tickle the notice notification.
Is your boy baller scoop thanks very much? I appreciate that, that’s uh, you know what that reminds me of when we first started this a couple months back uh, we talked about uh boxing as a sport, but then there’s the art of boxing.
What you just described, how i interpreted all that was that sugary leonard understood the art of boxing.
Yes, there’s a the sport of sportsmanship uh, the talent and the skill all that stuff, but there’s also an art to this and uh yeah.
I think i think, in that sequence or that trilogy you saw the art of boxing as well as the sport itself, good stuff man, good stuff.
The sport of boxing is very much cerebral and that’s the part that, like i said several times, that the layman does not see, they see it as well controlled rage to some some degree, but actually it’s not the case.
At the end of the day, the sport of boxing is about punching and not being punched and there’s multitude of ways to actually succeed.
In this scenario you can have you can go the way durant inside fighting, which is he is a genius at and bang bang bang.
You can also hit somebody so hard that they’re terrified of you and that makes that gives the the um the aggressors.
Some.
I don’t know kudos, you know bravado yeah, they’re, afraid of me and all of a sudden, their your opponent is too busy cowering turtling to actually launch an office, and you can just you’re just being on a heavy bag, or you can do with some of the Greats the leonard’s, the ray robinsons, the the uh muhammad ali’s, the tommy hearns like the list, goes on um roy jones jr.
You can touch and not be touched, touch and not be touched.
Like it’s poetry, it’s actually a beautiful display of athleticism.
I’M glad you liked it yeah.
I got a kind of a yin and yang of this whole uh episode tonight kind of cool awesome, so we’re almost at uh midweek, i say almost uh, because we’ve only done two of these.
These have been exciting, well-described uh between two great fighters, by the way, so with two unique styles and uh.
Why did they go at it? They they really went at it.
Those two guys you would you’d think from the fans perspective these guys hate each other and to hear that they’re friends now wow.
That’S that’s really good friends! Pretty cool thanks! Very much right appreciate it and uh thanks very much for all the viewership out there, loving the the talk and fight and keep your comments coming.
Remember.
If you’re uh subscribing hit that uh notification bell uh, let it ring so you get notified whenever we’re going live thanks very much ray, we’ll see you tomorrow, night cheers
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