Sugar Ray Leonard played a key role in one of boxing’s greatest eras.
After walking away from the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal with a Gold Medal, Leonard would embark on a glittering professional career that would span across twenty years.
He rose to prominence during the eighties, standing alongside Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Roberto Duran and Thomas Hearns, who are more commonly known to boxing fans as the ‘Four Kings’.
After suffering the first defeat of his career to Duran in 1980, Leonard avenged this in their rematch just a few months later when he forced ‘Hands of Stone’ to quit during the eighth round of the iconic ‘No Mas’ fight.
He would go on to beat Hagler and Hearns in the years that followed, before he faced Duran for the third time in 1989, defeating the Panamanian icon via unanimous decision to retain his WBC world super-middleweight title.
After facing Hagler, Hearns and Duran on at least one occasion each, Leonard revealed in an interview which of these legendary fighters was the toughest.
“Duran was the toughest man I ever faced, but I knew that if I could make him fight my fight, he would break. The rematch wasn’t about revenge. It was about proving I was the better fighter. I had to change the way I approached the fight—use my legs, my speed, frustrate him. When he quit, it wasn’t just about physical exhaustion. It was because I took away his spirit. I beat him mentally. That’s why he said, ‘No mas.’”
Duran remains just the second fighter in boxing history whose career stretched across five decades after the late-great Jack Johnson.
The Panamanian great won world titles in four divisions throughout the course of his tenure, including the undisputed lightweight championship which he captured back in 1978.