Hector Thompson

[Seamus]

I read an interview that came out today with the Australian Aboriginal Hector Thompson, and was quite surprised by what was said regarding his 1973 title bout against Roberto Duran. Here's a quotation from the article. "In 1973, Hector fought one of the greatest boxers of the 21 st century, the legendary Roberto Duran.

Flying all the way to Panama City to face Duran in his own backyard, Hector gave the champion one of the toughest fights of his career, but fell painfully short of snatching Duran’s worl d t itle.

“The atmosphere was intense,” Hector recalls. “The stadium was filled with screaming people and soldiers were standing all over the place with rifles, watching the crowd. But I wasn’t intimidated by that. It didn’t matter to me where I was fighting.”

While pushing one of the sport’s greatest ever champions to the brink of defeat is an amazing achievement within itself, for Hector it is still har d t o look back an d t hink about how close he came to winning it all.

“The referee shouldn’t have stoppe d t hat fight,” Hector says. “I was knocked to the canvas and the referee only counte d t o three an d t hen stopped it. I should’ve been given the full 10 seconds to get back to my feet and fight on.

“If I’d been allowe d t o continue I believe I would have won that fight, an d t hey knew it.

“It was hard".

Now I've never seen the Duran v Thompson fight, but I notice the scoring at the time of the stoppage was 70-64, 66-64, 70-63 all for Duran. Has anyone seen the fight, or know what happened. Hector Thompson isn't an all time great, but he did post some impressive wins in his career, and did fight for the world title on two occasions. He also had the extreme misfortune of having two opponents die of injuries after bouts.

[-KOKid-]

Been years since I saw this fight, but I remember it as being a pretty good scrap.
I can't say I remember Thompson ever being close to taking the title from Duran, but I suppose these stories get a bit exaggerated. The way I remember it, Duran got the better of Thompson is almost every round.
Good fight though, plenty of action.

-KOKid-

[Steve M]

Thompson did ok and it was indeed a questionable stoppage, though Duran seemed to have figured him out by then.

He was a lot stronger than Duran and it's one of the few lightweight fights where you will see Duran largely on the back foot.