Was Sugar Ray Robinson The Greatest?

Easily. When you look over the course of everything an athlete could do in their sport Ray has to be the one who had it all. I.e. if we're talking football I'd debate that Messi isn't near the best player in the world because he's not exactly going to be the best defending corners, making tackles or goalkeeping. Where Robinson had it all. He scored knockouts going forwards, on the back foot, via combinations, 1 hit counter punches, if he couldn't get the KO he could outbox anyone. In the inside with wars, on the outside behind the jab. He made everything look beautiful too. He comes from a dancing background, when he's in the ring he used to glide, he didn't step or plod like other fighters do. He had one of the hardest and smooth left hooks around which was his best punch, but his right hand was deadly too, all set up behind a stiff jab. Despite his finer qualities he was also blessed with one of the best chins in the sport. His versatility in skill and style is second to none, I know there are great athletes in other sports but it's hard to think of one that combines athletic and technical prowess and assets to such effect and aethstetics.

He fought 200 times,he scored over 100 KOs, he won 173 fights and most of his losses came when he was a 40 year old man on his last legs. It took 40 pro fights before he lost, many boxers these days don't even compile 40 bouts. He was unbeaten as an amateur so if you add that to his pro career he was in the ring 125 times before he tasted defeat and that was to one of the best Middleweights of all time, Jake LaMotta - the Raging Bull (who Ray beat 5(!) times in his career). He fought everyone and anyone, at any weight. Not many people know this but he was about to win the Light Heavyweight title but had to retire due to heat exhaustion, he was well up on points when he had to withdraw - a 3 weight champion in those days would've been something really special. The only reason why he moved up to Middleweight at first is because there were no welterweights crazy enough to get into the ring with him, remember those days there were only the main weight classes no super or juniors to make it easy and only one title - the fight game was controlled by the Mafia so it was almost impossible for anyone who wasn't involved with them to get a crack at the title. Ray never flirted with temptation of doing so and managed to get several title fights because they couldn't afford to ignore him despite belonging to an unfavoured minority group. He fought with basically no notice on many occasions too, having 2 or 3 weeks rest before fights and getting straight back into it, we'd never hear of any good athlete performing week in week out like that in this kind of a sport today.

Rivalries. Most of his rival's have built their legacy around fighting him, which is impressive enough, but the thing is that he had long series of fights against the best in the business. Just having a quick skim through his record on wiki he had LaMotta x6, Basilio x3, Kid Gavilan x2, Basora x2, Randy Turpin x2, Bobo Olson x3, Gene Fullmer x4, Fritzie Zivic etc etc. Then he fought other greats like Rocky Graziano, Joey Maxim, Henry Armstrong and others, the only 2 people I can think of who he didn't fight and I think he'd probably have beaten both of them. Those are Marcel Cerdan and Tony Zale. I'm not sure why the latter never happened but Cerdan died in a plane accident and I'm sure they'd have crossed paths otherwise. Many of those fighters are considered the best in a golden era of welterweights and middleweights - i.e. if they were alive now Sergio Martínez would be getting his arse kicked. There's surprisingly quite a lot of full length video footage of these guys in their prime and from a lot of what I've seen I can't say I would disagree.

He suffered knockdowns, got up and won. Same goes if he lost a fight, he'd secure a rematch and win it. Nobody beat him twice his IQ was so high there wasn't a strategy anyone could think up to defy him a second time if he slipped up the first. His adaptibility meant it was impossible to set a gameplan to beat him.

That aside, he is the protoype for a modern day sports star (or celebrity in general) long before his times. He was a ruthless businessmen, a born entertainer, a handsome chap, articulate and a showman. He's credited with inventing the concept of an entourage and the term was coined for him. He had his own midget for christ sake.







The second is an interview where it shows that hook I mentioned earlier and the third is part one of him and LaMotta discussing their championship bout, the second and 3rd are available on youtube if you look for them.



I could go on forever about him and his legacy in and outside of the ring. I think that there should be a film made out about him to immortalise him in folklore. He's spoken about in the entertainment and sporting world, but over time his relevance has diminished where people are more likely to remember LaMotta due to Raging Bull or Graziano because of Somebody Up There Loves Me etc.

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The above article/post was taken from "The Greatest" thread and can be located here: http://www.tiki-taka...4-the-greatest/