Every decade of American life seems to get another life in US popular culture.

In the 1970s, “American Graffiti,” “Happy Days,” and “Grease” were just some of the nostalgia trips taken to the 1950s followed later by more critical fare. The 1960s continues to be rehashed, for good and ill. 

It’s just one example of nostalgia for the 1980s. Even if you didn’t follow boxing then or later, there are names nearly everyone has heard because of their time in that decade’s sun. Children of the 1980s and 1990s are at some stage of the process now and it’s no surprise that many of the events that framed the world they saw growing up are being greenlit for revisiting in entertainment or academia. For boxing, the star centers of the 1980s were Mike Tyson (featured recently in a two-part ABC documentary) and Sugar Ray Leonard.

Debuting this Sunday on Showtime (8 PM EST), “The Kings” takes a look at the foursome of Leonard, Roberto Duran, Marvin Hagler, and Thomas Hearns over four episodes. Able to see the series as a whole prior to its premiere, the worst part about it may be viewers having to wait a week at a time to digest all of it.

There are also surely some viewers wondering whether it’s worth the time commitment at all. 

This isn’t new ground. 

Boxing documentary subjects can no doubt be repetitive. Tyson’s latest on ABC was just the latest in dozens of takes. Muhammad Ali documentaries are almost their own sub-genre. The four way welterweight-to-super-middleweight rivalry doesn’t have as extensive a library as either but it’s not without volume.    

Fans of a certain age will remember the VHS collection, “The Fabulous Four,” with extensive clips of eight of the nine fights between the four. Three episodes of the acclaimed HBO “Legendary Nights” series were devoted to the rivalry. Fox’s “Beyond the Glory” devoted episodes to Leonard and Duran, ESPN’s 30 for 30 combined both their stories in the “No Mas” documentary, and Hollywood took a stab at the story with the film “Hands of Stone” as well. Recently Duran was also the subject of the intriguing “I Am Duran.”

For anyone who has watched all of the above, is there something new to be mined here?

The answer is yes, and in a way that at times can be a little like the Mark Kram book and later HBO documentary “Ghosts of Manila.” Coming after Thomas Hauser’s classic biography, the 1996 Olympic torch lighting, and When We Were Kings, Manila laid out a distinct, and distinctly separate, take on Ali and his rivalry with Joe Frazier.

Agree or disagree with Kram’s observations or point of view, it remains an essential bookend to the overall narrative on the life of the greatest heavyweight of them all.

“The Kings,” among the above described documentaries, may best be described as a culmination of the work on their era. ESPN’s No Mas was excellent but arguably marred in the end by an awkward epilogue putting Leonard and Duran together in the present to discuss what happened in their second bout. It was hard not to see the production as a little bit infatuated with Leonard.

“The Kings” is anything but infatuated with the biggest star of the bunch and there is often no subtlety about it. The best evidence comes in the framing of Leonard-Duran II. Contrasting the scene of Ray Charles singing America the Beautiful with the rise of Ronald Reagan, it flashes on clips of Reagan playing movie cowboys in the context of “good guys” and “bad guys.” 

The camera flashes to Duran for the good, Leonard for the bad. 

It doesn’t mean the four parts tell the story of Leonard in a way that insults him. The narrative parallels with the world outside boxing may not work for all of the audience, and it can feel shoehorned in parts. The attempt is made to fit the grandeur of nine prizefights that became fodder beyond the sports section in the context of cultural excess and the politics of the 1980s. In that construct, Leonard’s public presentation, fame, and marketing creates a narrative opportunity where he is the symbol for how image can be commodified to hide humanity. It plays strongest when in contrast with Leonard telling stories of eating half eaten burgers out of the trash as a kid or simply exhibiting just how authentic Leonard was once the bell rang.

The series bounces between the stories of each competitor and it can sometimes make for whiplash as the timeline slides back and forth, extending to occasions where graphics don’t always line up with what was. The most glaring is a picture of Leonard, Hearns, and Hagler after a quick recap of Hearns’ win over Wilfred Benitez presenting them as the champions from welterweight to middleweight. Technically, Leonard retired just weeks before the Hearns victory.

It’s a small critique. So too is the enduring sidelining of the role of Benitez in their story. He gets time on screen but replace Hagler with Benitez and fans still have a memorable nine-fight foursome to look back on. Benitez was the unofficial fifth king and we were one fight, Hagler-Benitez, short of a Fab Five. 

Perhaps the best reason to watch is for some of the footage collected for this presentation. There are a lot of amateur clips, the late, young Marvin Hagler with hair, intimate footage of all, and some camera angles from Leonard’s Gold Medal win in 1976 that felt new and are beautifully mastered just to cite a few things viewers will see this weekend in episode one.

It’s been thirty-two years since the final contest between “The Kings.” That there is still something fresh to say about them speaks to how memorable an era it was. “The Kings” is highly recommended to those who lived through the era as a fan and those who want to show their kids what it was like when.    

Cliff Rold is the Managing Editor of BoxingScene, a founding member of the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board, a member of the International Boxing Research Organization, and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America.  He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com