1/16/2024 0 Comments Duran no mas![]() There wasn’t a real punch thrown for a minute and a half.ĭuran’s last chance, Round 12, went by without a challenge from the man once known as “Manos de Piedra” (Hands of Stone). The boos began midway through the ninth, a quiet round for both fighters. Seconds before the end of the seventh, Leonard missed wildly with a right hand, leaving himself wide open, and Duran only looked at the opportunity, never moving his fists. ![]() ![]() Leonard was making faces at Duran again as the round ended, but this time, as the bell rang, instead of getting a glare in return, Duran turned his gaze to the floor as the trudged back to his corner. ![]() Then came two more long rights that landed flush on Duran’s face. Leonard hurt Duran in the corner with a big left hook, then hit him again seconds later with a straight right and a left hook. There were no knockdowns, but Leonard seemed on the verge of sending Duran to the canvas halfway through the sixth. He went to the wrong one after the eighth, too. Leonard was hitting Duran so effectively at the end of the third round that Duran couldn’t find his corner at the bell. Once, in the sixth, Leonard tripped over his feet, was wide open, and Duran couldn’t get off a punch. Leonard barely needed to keep his right hand up to protect himself. Leonard, all but unchallenged, operated with sharpness, far more so than he showed last June in the draw with Thomas Hearns.ĭuran couldn’t even counter over Leonard’s frequent jabs. One was a right hand midway through the second round that caught Leonard flush, but the impact came at the end of the punch.Įarly in the third round, the pattern had been set. Duran’s people protested wildly at the suggestion Duran’s middleweight title was going up for grabs, with good reason, as it turned out.ĭuran, who lost 34 of 36 rounds on three Times scorecards, really landed only two telling punches. The fight was contracted for at 162 pounds. There was a premature announcement Thursday morning that Duran’s WBC middleweight championship might be at stake, too, since Leonard weighed in at 160 and Duran 158, under the middleweight limit. Leonard thus retained his World Boxing Council super-middleweight championship. Leonard (36-1-1) finished the fight with an aerobics workout after bleeding from the mouth earlier in the bout. When Duran bought it, Leonard hit him with the jab.ĭuran (85-8-0) did most of his damage in the 11th round, when he landed a right hand that opened a cut above Leonard’s left eye and sent blood streaming down Leonard’s face. He stuck out his chin for Duran, who didn’t even try to hit it, and faked a bolo punch several times. At times, Leonard was in such control that he appeared to be trying to goad Duran into quitting again, as he had in Leonard-Duran II, in New Orleans. That’s how it went for 10 rounds-Leonard boxing superbly, Duran failing to do much of anything. He finished the round freely hitting the Panamanian about the head and body, plainly the aggressor. Leonard, who started Round 1 cautiously, quickly sized up his opponent. Next were two long lead rights that landed on Duran’s head, followed by two body shots. Then Leonard tagged Duran with a hard left jab, and rattled him with a left-right combination. Duran tried a lunging right hand midway through the round and Leonard blocked it. Leonard started out with constant lateral movement, Duran watching. Leonard, who spent his time between rounds under a beige blanket in his corner, secure from the 60-degree air, set the tone for a mismatch in the first round. Leonard will earn a minimum of $15 million for what was one of the easiest victories of his $100-million career. Those looking to wake up the echoes from Montreal didn’t even get a pantomime. On Thursday night, Roberto Duran wasn’t even a pest. At Montreal in 1980, Duran savagely assaulted Leonard.
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