Four Kings: The intoxicating and captivating tale of four men who changed the face of boxing from award-winning sports writer George Kimball

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Despite comparing them, all 4 fighters’ conditioning should be appreciated as they were the top athletes of their time.

I have watched the Hagler/Leonard fight over a dozen times and there is no way Leonard won that fight except the powers that be knew that Leonard was more of a cash cow than Hagler so they made sure Leonard won. Four Kings captures the contests, fighters and the period with a wonderful perception and vividly conjures up those by-gone smoky and raucous ringside nights in Vegas. When they met again five months later in New Orleans, Duran, who claimed he had stomach cramps, cried ‘No Mas’ in the eighth round and quit — the most notorious and ignominious capitulation in boxing history. Who could ever forget the savagery of Hagler-Hearns, the sheer class displayed in Leonard-Hearns, or the way the entire world stopped for Leonard-Hagler?

I is a well written account of the Middleweight division during that time and the 4 legends that dominated that weight class. Four Kings" reads like an exploration of the footnotes found in sports publications like Sports Illustrated and Ring Magazine.

This makes it easy to follow and you are kept up to date with where each fighter is in the career at those moments without having to have their boxing record open in-front of you.

Four Kingswill examine the notorious rivalry between British boxing legends Chris Eubank, Nigel Benn, Lennox Lewis and Frank Bruno. FOUR KINGS: Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, Duran and the Last Great Era of Boxing” was published, to widespread acclaim, by Mainstrean Press in the United Kingdom and by McBooks Press in the United States, and immediately became the best-selling boxing book in both countries. The last factor is one most use to separate the four, however, it deserves more detail than looking at the records and realising Leonard beat everyone. Moreso his inability to accept the judges' decision in his last fight against Leonard - until the end of his life. I found The Kings as mesmerising as When They Were Kings, the documentary about the Ali-Foreman Rumble in the Jungle saga that won an Oscar 26 years ago — and I can’t give it higher praise than that.

If Hollywood had scripted the kind of 15-round war Leonard and Duran waged in Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, the critics would have rubbished it as too far-fetched. Regarding Ray Leonard, Kimball navigates through the events and portrayal of the boxer, highlighting both his successes and shortcomings. Ray Charles, after who Leonard was named, sang "America the Beautiful" before the second Leonard-Duran fight, at the Superdome, in New Orleans. But Hearns would put himself in Marvin’s sights by shattering their shared rival in two brutal rounds.The author has written in detail, all the fights (and the events leading up to them) of the Four Kings. Marvin Hagler, Tommy Hearns, Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran are absolute legends in the boxing world and deservedly so. Duran, a natural LIGHTWEIGHT, managed to beat Leonard at welterweight and come oh-so-close to beating Hagler – many people’s pick for THE best middleweight champion in history – at 160-pounds. Much like print journalism, boxing has been fighting for survival against newer and more sleek offerings that ultimately it may not be able to compete against.

Tommy Hearns steps into the ring in Detroit, knocking out most of his opponents in devastating fashion. The controversial outcome of another - the 1987 Leonard-Hagler fight - remains the subject of heated debates amongst fans to this day . Kimball's exploration of these factors contributes to a broader understanding of the challenges that the sport faced during that time. Sugar Ray came out of retirement having had one fight in five years — Hagler who hadn’t been beaten for 11 years never fought again. He is also the author of “American at Large,” a collection of his Irish Times columns, and the co-author, with Eamonn Coghlan, of “Chairman of the Boards,” both published by Dublin’s Red Rock Press, and has traveled frequently to Ireland for the past four decades.The fight delivered on this promise, as Sugar Ray went behind early only to rally for a 14th round TKO. That is, it is about a time when the matches themselves transcended the squalor of the business side of the sport, and focused only on the men who fought. What followed was a tactical battle, showing that these two were skilled technicians as well as being brutal warriors. This will always be up for debate but this scoring system at least provides calculated reasoning as to how they match up!