{"id":311083,"date":"2025-08-02T05:03:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T05:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/311083\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T05:03:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T05:03:09","slug":"roberto-duran-says-one-fighter-was-even-more-skillful-than-leonard-hagler-and-hearns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/311083\/","title":{"rendered":"Roberto Duran Says One Fighter Was Even More Skillful Than Leonard, Hagler And Hearns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roberto Duran<\/a> was one of the legendary \u2018Four Kings\u2019 of boxing.<\/a><\/p>\n

The quartet was made up of Duran, Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns, with them all competing against each other in epic fights during the 1980s.<\/a><\/p>\n

Duran had a trilogy with Leonard, winning one and losing two, with the Panamanian great also came up short in his battles against Hagler and Hearns.<\/p>\n

Despite sharing many rounds with the other three men, Duran has another fighter in mind when it came to deciding who the most skilful boxer he ever fought was.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Ring Magazine, he revealed that honour went to former undisputed lightweight champion Ken Buchanan.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cBuchanan was one of the great lightweights when it came to tactics and skill. His intelligence made him very difficult to beat even though he wasn\u2019t a very strong opponent. Sugar Ray Leonard was faster and stronger but Buchanan had tremendous skills.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A 21-year-old Duran took on Buchanan at Madison Square Garden in New York in June 1972, in what was the Panamanian\u2019s first shot at a world title, with Duran claiming a 13th round TKO victory to become the new WBA lightweight champion.<\/p>\n

Prior to that, Scotland\u2019s Buchanan had become undisputed at lightweight after picking up wins over the likes of Ismael Laguna and Ruben Navarro.<\/p>\n

Buchanan\u2019s final fight took place in 1982, as he ended his career with a record of 61 wins and 8 defeats, 27 of those wins by knockout. After a battle with dementia, Buchanan sadly passed away in 2023 at the age of 77.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roberto Duran was one of the legendary \u2018Four Kings\u2019 of boxing. The quartet was made up of Duran,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-311083","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\/114957425242028106","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311083","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=311083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}