Who was the better Boxer ..........Duran or Pryor

[TheGreatA]

I have a different criteria for technical Boxer than most, some people will look at Kessler as a technical fighter but i dont, what i view him as is conventional but not exactly technical. I can name a few things that i think Kessler does wrong that make him a predictable fighter, albeit effective.

Taylor has is a much better Boxer than Kessler from my perspective, he has more variety offensively, uses angles better and he is more fluid.

Now i bet you would say Kessler is a technical fighter? im not going to call you wrong because its just a criteria we differ on and either can be argued but that might be why we are on a different page regarding Duran & Pryor's skills.

I respect your opinion though TheGreatA

I did think we had some differences in how we view a boxer's skills.

I do agree though that Kessler, despite being as "textbook" as it gets, is nowhere near the best boxer around today. Someone like Bernard Hopkins, although unconventional, is a far better boxer than he is.

Duran is not exactly textbook either and people might miss a lot of the things he can do at first glance. He feints, he rolls with the punches, he cuts the ring off, he places his punches with accuracy. Some would classify him as a simple face-first brawler which he clearly isn't.

I can see where you're coming from. Meldrick Taylor to me only got by because of his talent, Pryor on the other hand could be a very good boxer when he wanted to be. I'm not sure if he would have looked as good if he fought the kind of competition Duran did however, aside from Arguello.

[Dynamite Kid]

I did think we had some differences in how we view a boxer's skills.

I do agree though that Kessler, despite being as "textbook" as it gets, is nowhere near the best boxer around today. Someone like Bernard Hopkins, although unconventional, is a far better boxer than he is.

Duran is not exactly textbook either and people might miss a lot of the things he can do at first glance. He feints, he rolls with the punches, he cuts the ring off, he places his punches with accuracy. Some would classify him as a simple face-first brawler which he clearly isn't.

I can see where you're coming from. Meldrick Taylor to me only got by because of his talent, Pryor on the other hand could be a very good boxer when he wanted to be. I'm not sure if he would have looked as good if he fought the kind of competition Duran did however, aside from Arguello.

..................Thats fair.

[BennyST]

I must admit that I'm really surprised anyone can look at the Duran/De Jesus III fight which GreatA put up and not understand how skilled he was. He took a great lightweight, who aside from Duran dominated his division for years, and utterly took him apart without any crazy offense or brute strength or just insane stamina and non stop punching like Pryor did to most of his opponents.

Watch it properly. Look at him spin De Jesus after slipping a punch, turn him around and then counter him to the body and head in the corner in the eighth. That is as skillful as anything Toney, Whitaker, Pep or Mayweather have done. How can't you see that?

Something else that is very hard to notice about him, and this is the reason most people don't think he's skilled, is his feints. Watch the De Jesus fight...In fact, watch the first Leonard fight as that is a great example of it. He feints throughout that fight so brilliantly it is unbelievable. You'll rarely ever see that type of feinting by anyone. He has Leonard twitching and flinching all over the place, expecting one punch to come over the top or underneath and then the opposite happens. Check out the feint ...ummm... I can't remember the round. It's in the far right hand corner though. He dips down, feints his jab, Leonard pulls back, then he feints his right, Leonard drops his head a little and he comes through with a short left hook which cracks Leonard and then a right follows which also hammers home and staggers Leonard back into the corner.

He was especially a master of feinting with his left, then getting in his straight right which again, he did over and over and over in the Leonard fight.

As for not noticing these things, it's because often with a guy that fights on the inside and aggressively, you don't notice them whereas some that fights with only a counter style laying back, it's easier to notice because they are always waiting for a mistake instead of creating a mistake like Duran. No one I know feints today anything like Duran did.

Pryor was a great boxer and did have underrated skills. Just not that many. He was still faster than most of the guys he fought. He had good upper body and head movement, though not great. He was very good, but really, it's not that close. In fact, I can hardly even see how might think otherwise.

Dynamite: That example was at the start of round ten, not eight. About 20 seconds in or so, Duran gets backed into the corner and then spins De Jesus. Beautiful move. Check it out.

[BennyST]

One other thing though. Taking apart a guy like Gaeten Hart and looking good and boxing doing it is not hard for someone of Pryor's skill. Taking apart someone that is as good a boxer as De Jesus is incredible though.

If you actually look at Pryor though and the mistakes he does make against Gaeten Hart, it's interesting that you think that's a great performance. He hangs his chin out, literally (I don't know if he daring Hart to hit it or what but he hangs it out all the time), he is wild with his counters and someone better and quicker would have countered him a lot.

I don't mean to sound rude or anything if I do. I don't know. It's hard to know what you sound like to other people when you type things on a computer. Anyway, you can see the mistakes Pryor makes. He's often off balance after a counter shot, often misses wildly and is lucky he never fought a very good counter puncher is that sense.

I don't know man, I just really don't see it. He was great but he wasn't really that good of a boxer. That performance looks much more showy to me than anything. As if he is deliberately playing to the crowd more than usual and doing little fun things that you do in the gym...You know, grab the rope and slide ala Walcott, side-step back and forth, then jump in with a punch....it looks good but is nothing more than show. It doesn't really do anything to confuse his opponent but it looks skillful and interesting to the crowd.

[BennyST]

Duran moved up to welterweight to avoid facing Pryor according to Pryor`s Bio. This mite anger Duran fans but they felt the risk was too high for a Pryor fite as the money would have been lot less than Sugar Ray Leonard. Pryor on the other hand was plopped in the jr. welterweight division because he was avoided by the lightweight champions at the time. Leonard admitted to avoiding Pryor because money wasn`t right and Hearns had no excuses...He didn`t want to risk anything vs. Pryor. Only thing that finally beat Pryor was cokaine. He was great. Duran too.

Where did this weird myth ever come from? Both Duran and Leonard were never matched up to Pryor and any supposed ducking was never even possible. Duran was at 154 already years before Pryor even got semi noticed and won his first ever title and Leonard had already beaten massive superstars and retired for gods sake!



Arghhhh! Where does this idiocy come from?

Now, Pryor was given a shot at Duran when Duran moved up to 140/147 and was fighting bigger guys and the contenders of 140/147 but they never took it. It had nothing to do with Duran whom I'm pretty sure you'll understand by now took on every single opponent possible, contender, champion whatever.

Geez, why bother, these never change anyone's minds.

[Bushidō]

I must admit that I'm really surprised anyone can look at the Duran/De Jesus III fight which GreatA put up and not understand how skilled he was. He took a great lightweight, who aside from Duran dominated his division for years, and utterly took him apart without any crazy offense or brute strength or just insane stamina and non stop punching like Pryor did to most of his opponents.

Watch it properly. Look at him spin De Jesus after slipping a punch, turn him around and then counter him to the body and head in the corner in the eighth. That is as skillful as anything Toney, Whitaker, Pep or Mayweather have done. How can't you see that?

Something else that is very hard to notice about him, and this is the reason most people don't think he's skilled, is his feints. Watch the De Jesus fight...In fact, watch the first Leonard fight as that is a great example of it. He feints throughout that fight so brilliantly it is unbelievable. You'll rarely ever see that type of feinting by anyone. He has Leonard twitching and flinching all over the place, expecting one punch to come over the top or underneath and then the opposite happens. Check out the feint ...ummm... I can't remember the round. It's in the far right hand corner though. He dips down, feints his jab, Leonard pulls back, then he feints his right, Leonard drops his head a little and he comes through with a short left hook which cracks Leonard and then a right follows which also hammers home and staggers Leonard back into the corner.

He was especially a master of feinting with his left, then getting in his straight right which again, he did over and over and over in the Leonard fight.

As for not noticing these things, it's because often with a guy that fights on the inside and aggressively, you don't notice them whereas some that fights with only a counter style laying back, it's easier to notice because they are always waiting for a mistake instead of creating a mistake like Duran. No one I know feints today anything like Duran did.

Pryor was a great boxer and did have underrated skills. Just not that many. He was still faster than most of the guys he fought. He had good upper body and head movement, though not great. He was very good, but really, it's not that close. In fact, I can hardly even see how might think otherwise.

IMO people just look at the Duran that fought Leonard and judge him from that. Some people don't sit down to watch his older fights to see he wasn't just some wild man. He did so many things and sometimes it took several times watching the same tape to understand how great he was. The dude was a legend and IMO Duran was much better than Pryor

[Thread Stealer]

Duran was a better boxer than Pryor.

Where did this weird myth ever come from? Both Duran and Leonard were never matched up to Pryor and any supposed ducking was never even possible. Duran was at 154 already years before Pryor even got semi noticed and won his first ever title and Leonard had already beaten massive superstars and retired for gods sake!



Arghhhh! Where does this idiocy come from?

Now, Pryor was given a shot at Duran when Duran moved up to 140/147 and was fighting bigger guys and the contenders of 140/147 but they never took it. It had nothing to do with Duran whom I'm pretty sure you'll understand by now took on every single opponent possible, contender, champion whatever.

Geez, why bother, these never change anyone's minds.

The Leonard-Pryor thing is from Legendary Nights (a show that spawned many myths). It's just another example of how people, a phrase I heard and liked was "press conference fans", get their panties wet because someone calls out someone else (like it's a 5th-grade lunchroom fight rather than a multi-millionaire business).

Apparently Pryor wasn't happy with a half-million offer from Leonard and turned it down (this was from an SI article around this time). Considering the fact that Pryor made over a mil to fight Arguello, a fight he won, I'd say it was a smart business decision and you can call it a "low-ball" offer.

Pryor and Duran were supposed to fight at a catchweight of 150 at one point, but Pryor had all sorts of managerial problems and took awhile to sort them out. By the time they were sorted out, Duran had moved on (this is from both the SI article and Duran's biography "Hands of Stone")

[BennyST]

Damn! I forgot how good he is in that fight (De Jesus III). I haven't watched it in a while.

How often though do you hear a guy like Angelo Dundee say "Duran don't get enough credit for being a real smart cookie in there. He's real cute, does a lot of things that you don't see. Slides and slips, rolls and feints. He's very cute. De Jesus is a real sharp-shooter and he just can't reach Duran. That's the mark of a great fighter"? For someone that has trained everyone from Ali to Leonard to Nunn and some of slickest fighters in history and more, that's amazingly high praise.

Gil Clancy also reinforces a similar point of view.

[BennyST]

Duran was a better boxer than Pryor.



The Leonard-Pryor thing is from Legendary Nights (a show that spawned many myths). It's just another example of how people, a phrase I heard and liked was "press conference fans", get their panties wet because someone calls out someone else (like it's a 5th-grade lunchroom fight rather than a multi-millionaire business".

Apparently Pryor wasn't happy with a half-million offer from Leonard and turned it down (this was from an SI article around this time). Considering the fact that Pryor made over a mil to fight Arguello, a fight he won, I'd say it was a smart business decision and you can call it a "low-ball" offer.

Pryor and Duran were supposed to fight at a catchweight of 150 at one point, but Pryor had all sorts of managerial problems and took awhile to sort them out. By the time they were sorted out, Duran had moved on (this is from both the SI article and Duran's biography "Hands of Stone")

Ahhh, yes. The legendary 'Legendary Nights'.

[RightCross94]

Duran was a much better fighter, technical and otherwise, than Pryor ever was. Pryor was good, but ridiculously overrated, he is made out to be invincible by some.