As fans may well have read or heard, former three-weight king Iran Barkley – sometimes dubbed ‘The Fifth King,’ this after Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, and Duran – suffered a stroke last week.
According to various people within the boxing community who have sent out best wishes messages to Iran Barkley, the 64-year-old is currently in hospital in New York due to suffering a stroke earlier this week.
For a fight that lasted just three minutes, the middleweight slugfest that took place on this day 33 years ago between Nigel Benn and Iran Barkley, sure was crammed full of action.
Bronx warrior and all-round tough guy (he should be in The Hall of Fame, no doubt about it) Iran Barkley had some thrilling ring career, as all fans know.
30 years ago, James “Lights Out” Toney really was one of the baddest, meanest, most superbly skilled fighters out there. Proof of this – additional proof – is the hatchet job Toney did on “The Blade,” Iran Barkley.
The way Iran Barkley tells it, Sugar Ray Leonard wanted no part of him. No thanks, no chance, no way. This was across the time period between Barkley’s stunning upset of fellow “Four Kings” member Thomas Hearns and Barkley’s epic battle with yet another “King” in Roberto Duran.
It was 34 years ago today when Iran Barkley won the middleweight title by way of a stunning KO of Thomas Hearns.
As great as he was – as in super-great – Thomas Hearns never could get past Iran Barkley and his “Blade.”
Roberto Duran gave us, and the sport he added so much to, a vast number of great fights. “Hands Of Stone” thrilled, caused controversy, and quite literally terrified his opponents when he boxed as a lightweight (with many historians saying Duran deserves to be ranked as the greatest 135 pounders ever); while the Panamanian legend also ruled supreme at welterweight, light-middleweight and middleweight.
On this day 30 years ago, Iran “The Blade” Barkley perhaps cut his most damaging blow. Though Barkley had cut down the great Thomas Hearns to win his first world title in the summer of 1988, the Bronx terror had then lost to Roberto Duran (in one of the greatest fights of all-time, granted) – and Barkley had then lost to Michael Nunn and Nigel Benn, and he had suffered a serious eye injury.