{"id":222188,"date":"2025-06-28T20:19:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-28T20:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/222188\/"},"modified":"2025-06-28T20:19:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-28T20:19:08","slug":"sugar-ray-leonard-has-no-doubt-which-of-the-four-kings-was-his-toughest-opponent-i-had-to-break-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/222188\/","title":{"rendered":"Sugar Ray Leonard Has No Doubt Which Of The Four Kings Was His Toughest Opponent: “I Had To Break Him”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sugar Ray Leonard<\/a> played a key role in one of boxing\u2019s greatest eras.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

He rose to prominence during the eighties, standing alongside Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Roberto Duran and Thomas Hearns<\/a>, who are more commonly known to boxing fans as the \u2018Four Kings\u2019.<\/p>\n

After suffering the first defeat of his career to Duran in 1980<\/a>, Leonard avenged this in their rematch just a few months later when he forced \u2018Hands of Stone\u2019 to quit during the eighth round of the iconic \u2018No Mas\u2019 fight.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cDuran 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\u2019t about revenge. It was about proving I was the better fighter. I had to change the way I approached the fight\u2014use my legs, my speed, frustrate him. When he quit, it wasn\u2019t just about physical exhaustion. It was because I took away his spirit. I beat him mentally. That\u2019s why he said, \u2018No mas.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Duran remains just the second fighter in boxing history whose career stretched across five decades after the late-great Jack Johnson.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sugar Ray Leonard played a key role in one of boxing\u2019s greatest eras. After walking away from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-222188","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\/114762846312421243","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222188","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=222188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}