Other reasons why Radley and his Bunch are awesome:
Take a look between them and some of the prominent members of Malcolm's Crew. Radley's Bunch are all young kids. Malcolm's Crew has a lot of older bullies. There's some younger people there, but they're not calling the shots.
(Also, why are some of the prominent Crewmembers drawn so goofily? **Those three stooges. Cough cough.** How am I supposed to take them seriously? By contrast, all of Radley's Bunch are given serious designs.)
Radley and his group of kids kept Malcolm from seizing total control of the town and oppressing the people for who knows how long before Kalin even arrived. Judging from the posters of other duelists and their numbers of wins (the latter shown only in the Japanese version, unfortunately), it was quite a while. The dub makes him sound even more awesome because Barbara says there were others besides him and Malcolm trying to control the mine and Radley held off against them too.
Radley's Bunch largely looks like a bunch of 1950s and 1980s teens. They look like pretty clean-cut kids, really. From what we see of their personalities, they're quite nice, aside from the one boy trying to duel his friend when Barbara forces them into it. (And that was an act of desperation and fear; he seemed nice too, aside from that.) And in the Japanese, they're clearly hanging out in a diner and not a bar or a saloon. I wish the dub hadn't removed the writing on the sign that says Diner! Most likely, Radley is not drinking an alcoholic beverage even in the Japanese. The dub probably didn't need to change the color of it.
Also, when Kalin wins, it's more than just the gang cheering for him. It looks like some of the townspeople have chosen sides to align with too. So apparently at least some of them want Radley's Bunch to win. Or maybe they just cheer for whoever wins, but I’ll bet some of them don’t want Malcolm’s Crew to win! They were terrified when Lawton took over and he and Malcolm oppressed them!