Roberto Duran is regarded as one of the greatest boxers of all time.
The legendary icon was a four-weight world champion at lightweight, welterweight, light middleweight and middleweight, and was involved in some of the most memorable fights in the history of the sport.
Duran was one of the ‘Four Kings’ alongside Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns, and it is his meeting with one of those men that still lives long in the memory of the Panamanian.
In November 1983, Duran met Hagler for the WBA, WBC and IBF middleweight titles, with the American claiming a unanimous decision victory after 15 hard-fought rounds of action.
It was a close fight that some fans felt could have gone either way, and Duran has told Boxing Scene that it is a clash that he still believes he should have been victorious in.
“I still feel in my heart that I won the fight against Marvin Hagler. Nobody wanted to fight Marvin, because he was knocking off everyone. And this journalist said to me, ‘Roberto, why would you want to fight Marvin? He’s going to knock you out.’ I said, ‘Why? I’m young, I’m strong, he’s not going to knock me out. That bald head won’t beat me.’ And I feel like I won. But after we fought, I would see him in Vegas and we became friends.”
Having shared the ring with each of Hagler, Leonard and Hearns during his career, Duran also recently named who he deems to have been the best out of those three.
