Boxing: The Best of the 1980s (1992)

The subtitle, ''The Greatest Fighters of the 1980s,'' is the giveaway: This two-cassette boxing package ought to be called Some Pretty Bad Fights of Some Very Good Fighters. Boxing: The Best of the 1980s features snippets of 14 mostly insignificant bouts of 12 major fighters of the decade, notably Roberto Duran, George Foreman, and Aaron Pryor — past their primes and ostensibly on the comeback trail. The matches, all foregone conclusions anyway, unfold mostly uncontested, with the exception of an exciting Reynaldo Snipes-Johnny Duplooy slugfest and the Antonio Esparragoza-Stevie Cruz featherweight championship. Despite good video quality, even die-hard boxing junkies would have to be a bit punchy to turn to this compilation of bogus bouts to catch up on what they may have missed over the decade. C-