Some knockouts never get old, nor do they ever seem to lose their shock factor. Such a KO is the one that took place in Las Vegas some 41 years ago today. It was at Caesars Palace, once THE big-fight venue, where two all-time greats collided. Thomas \u201cHitman\u201d Hearns, the reigning WBC champion at 154 pounds, and \u201cHands of Stone,\u201d Roberto Duran, the former lightweight, welterweight, and light-middleweight champion, met, and fans braced for something special.<\/p>\n
Hearns had lost only to Sugar Ray Leonard, while Duran, who was coming off a squeaker of a 15-round decision loss to current middleweight king Marvelous Marvin Hagler, was the only man to have handed Leonard a defeat. So it struck plenty of people as kind of strange and unrealistic when Hearns predicted a second-round KO win over the Panamanian legend.<\/p>\n
Hearns, all-business both in the ring and out of it, was not really a man for pre-fight predictions, nor was he a man who came out with much, if any, trash-talk. But Hearns, who had not stopped a foe in almost two years, his right hand having undergone surgery, was firm: he would ice Roberto and he would do it quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI say in two, Duran says in four,\u201d Hearns said before the fight when discussing how long the legalised violence would last. \u201cI have never in my whole career predicted a round, but, for this fight, I\u2019m going to show to the world that I have those abilities too. I feel there\u2019s a lot of great things about me that the public does not know yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
The June 15, 1984 showdown was dubbed \u2018Malice at the Palace,\u201d and 32 year old Duran, 77-5(58) entered the ring first, followed by the Detroit star. A sell-out crowd was on hand to see what would happen, whether or not it would be a great and special fight. It was special all right, even if brutally one-sided.<\/p>\n
25 year old Hearns, who was 38-1(32) was making his prediction stick, in fact he almost ended the fight in the opening round, this as he decked Duran twice, with Hearns also inflicting a cut at the side of Duran\u2019s eye. The fight had turned into a slaughter. Hearns, on fire and determined as he would say later to \u201creturn as The Hitman,\u201d jumped right on Duran again at the start of round two. Backing Duran into the ropes and leaving him with no place to go, Hearns then landed a blockbuster right hand to the chin. The split-second the bomb landed, Duran was out, and he fell, face-first to the canvas. It was over, just as Hearns had predicted it would be, inside two rounds.<\/p>\n
Hearns might have scored one or two even more devastating knockouts during a career that was full of highlight-reel fight-enders, but I can\u2019t for the life of me think of one!<\/p>\n
In short, the Thomas Hearns who absolutely annihilated Roberto Duran \u2013 a fighting warrior of the highest order, and one who had never before and would never again be rendered unconscious in a fight \u2013 might have been pretty close to unbeatable. This was Hearns at his most vicious. This was Hearns at his most accurate and power-packed. This was Thomas Hearns at his dazzling peak.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s worth remembering also that Hearns never lost a single fight at 154 pounds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some knockouts never get old, nor do they ever seem to lose their shock factor. Such a KO…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-187697","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114690345339247799","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}