{"id":304397,"date":"2025-11-24T20:01:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T20:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/304397\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T20:01:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T20:01:07","slug":"sugar-ray-leonard-has-conceded-he-should-have-lost-fight-against-fierce-rival-you-really-won","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/304397\/","title":{"rendered":"Sugar Ray Leonard has conceded he should have lost fight against fierce rival: “You really won”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite his remarkable achievements, Sugar Ray Leonard<\/a> still harbours regrets about one fight in particular where the result could have quite easily swung in favour of his opponent.<\/p>\n

Throughout his decorated career, Leonard suffered just three defeats \u2013 against Roberto Duran, Terry Norris and H\u00e9ctor Camacho \u2013 in all of his 40 professional outings.<\/p>\n

The first of which came in 1980, back when the American neglected his typically crafty tactics, and instead decided to go toe-to-toe with his more rugged opponent.<\/p>\n

As a result, Duran emerged from their first encounter with a unanimous decision victory through 15 rounds, before capitulating in their immediate rematch at 147lbs.<\/p>\n

That time around, Leonard had implemented a more calculated gameplan, and in doing so was able to reclaim his WBC title with an emphatic eighth-round stoppage victory.<\/p>\n

As for his defeats to Norris and Camacho, which both arrived at the end of his career, \u2018Sugar\u2019 was never able to exact his revenge.<\/p>\n

The one fight that seems to have left a stone in his shoe, however, is his rematch with Thomas Hearns, which saw Leonard come away with a highly controversial draw in 1989.<\/p>\n

Leonard had stopped his rival in the 14th round of their thrilling encounter in 1981<\/a>, but up at a catchweight of 164lbs and nearly a decade later, he was simply not quite so effective.<\/p>\n

Many thought that Hearns, the natural super-middleweight, had done enough to claim a points decision, and even Leonard himself has admitted to Harvard Business Review<\/a> that he should have suffered a fourth professional defeat.<\/p>\n

\u201cI regret the ones I lost: H\u00e9ctor Camacho, Terry Norris, the second fight with Tommy Hearns (which I won on [one] scorecard, but which he really won as far as I\u2019m concerned).<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking back, I do have regrets, but I wouldn\u2019t be the person I am today if I hadn\u2019t gone through it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many fans in attendance were furious with the outcome<\/a>, with Leonard\u2019s honesty a refreshing change for most boxers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite his remarkable achievements, Sugar Ray Leonard still harbours regrets about one fight in particular where the result…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-304397","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}