The quartet fought each other nine times in an unofficial round robin-like manner throughout the 1980s and delivered a decade of memorable matchups that are still talked about today.<\/p>\n
Recently retired five-division champion Terence Crawford believes he could have held his own and mixed it up with any of the four legends if he fought in their era.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be honest, I had a little bit of all of them,\u201d said Crawford. \u201cI wouldn’t say I only had one of their styles because I do so much in the ring. Like Marvin Hagler, I’m a southpaw. Like Sugar Ray Leonard, I can box on my toes. Like Roberto Duran, I can roll with the punches, catch, shoot, and throw from underneath. With Tommy Hearns, I can fight from the outside with a good, sharp jab. I’m all of that in one. \u2026 [I would fight] any of them \u2013 just pick one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crawford is certainly cut from a different cloth and would be able to hold his own in the fantasy fights. After all, in the last fight of his illustrious career, he climbed up two weight classes to unseat super middleweight king Canelo Alvarez<\/a> in September.In December, however, the 38-year-old Crawford called it a career<\/a> and hung up the gloves.<\/p>\n \u201cI’m great where I am at. What more can I do? What more can I accomplish?\u201d said Crawford. \u201cI’m happy, thankful, content, blessed, and grateful for what I did in the sport of boxing? What better way to finish after what I did?<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a sigh of relief [retiring], but it was a bittersweet moment. It was like, dang, this is my first love, and it’s all coming to an end right here. I am happy that I got to the pinnacle of boxing and that I don’t have to go through the things I went through anymore. I was sad that I had to give up something that I loved so much.<\/p>\n \u201cIt feels great to be one of the pioneers who paved the way for younger and up-and-coming fighters.\u201d<\/p>\n Years down the line, a select few might emerge from the generation that follows \u201cBud\u201d and be billed as \u201cthe next Terence Crawford.\u201d<\/p>\n But for now, as Crawford compares himself to the Four Kings, how would he have fared if his card were drawn to fight one of them?<\/p>\n As you think about it, we\u2019ll leave you with this: Below is how the nine fights unfolded between Leonard, Hagler, Hearns and Duran.<\/p>\n Duran UD 15 Leonard \u2013 6\/20\/1980 \u2013 Welterweight<\/p>\n Leonard TKO 8 Duran \u2013 11\/25\/1980 \u2013 Welterweight <\/p>\n Leonard TKO 14 Hearns \u2013 9\/16\/1981 \u2013 Welterweight<\/p>\n Hagler UD 15 Duran \u2013 11\/10\/1983 \u2013 Middleweight <\/p>\n Hearns TKO 2 Duran \u2013 6\/15\/1984 \u2013 Middleweight<\/p>\n Hagler TKO 3 Hearns \u2013 4\/15\/1985 \u2013 Middleweight<\/p>\n Leonard SD 12 Hagler \u2013 4\/6\/1987 \u2013 Middleweight<\/p>\n Hearns D 12 Leonard \u2013 6\/12\/1989 \u2013 Middleweight<\/p>\n Leonard UD 12 Duran \u2013 12\/7\/1989 \u2013 Super Middleweight<\/p>\n Overall record in head-to-head fights among the Four Kings<\/p>\n Leonard: 4-1-1<\/p>\n \nHagler: 2-1<\/p>\n \nHearns: 1-2-1<\/p>\n \nDuran: 1-4<\/p>\n Manouk Akopyan is The Ring\u2019s lead writer. Follow him on X and Instagram: @ManoukAkopyan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The quartet fought each other nine times in an unofficial round robin-like manner throughout the 1980s and delivered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[59273,2560,151516,6102,101,6826,15873,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-491281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-object-object","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-articles","tag-boxing-news","tag-sports","tag-the-ring","tag-trending","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}