I been watching some Sugar Ray Robinson videos. Where does he stand on the GOAT list?

This question is for the boxing heads. I kept hearing about this boxer. So i finally decided to look him up and i love what i see. Knock out power is up there. One of the best uppercuts i seen a boxer throw. But how would he do in today’s middleweight division? Is he truly a “GOAT” as many claim? Can he beat a Floyd, Spence, or Canelo?

 

Canelo and Floyd no. But I’m just going on what I can actually see for myself and not old men reminiscing about old times.

an old man will tell you there is no good deserts today and when he was around they made a particular kind of black licorice that is better than anything you could taste today of any dessert or you could even comprehend.

That’s just my opinion. Watch his fights. You only can go by what you see on video tape. Not mythical lore.
And if you go by just the actual fights that you can observe. He’s not even top 5-10. In my opinion.

again. That’s just comparing all of his fights you can see and not old men lore.

 

He was the greatest if we consider his achievements relative to his time. Went 132-3 in his prime, beat champions and top contenders from the lightweight division up to the middleweight division (and nearly captured the light heavyweight title). Remained a top contender into his 40's.

No idea how he would do nowadays, it's almost a different sport. The gloves were smaller, boxers fought every weekend, fights went to 15 rounds, judges scored on an entirely different basis. Referees barely interacted with the fighters, boxers fought in the clinches, and used dirty tactics.

Floyd Mayweather's style wouldn't have won him any favours in those days. His fragile hands would've been a problem too. George Benton was pretty damn skilled but he barely ever had a decision going his way.

 

His combined ammy/pro record was fucking crazy. Didn't he win like 100 fights in a row between end of amateur and beginning of pro?

And he beat virtually everyone available.


Ali and Robinson are probably the most common answers.

And @chiefwiggum greatest is not the best. Two different concepts imho.

 

Vicente Saldivar is one of the 2 or 3 best lefties I've seen but he's certainly not in these goat discussions.

But his talent was every bit as big as Pernell imo. From a "raw materials" standpoint he was a fuckin goliath

 

I dont know much about old licorice but I know today's fans are naive. Pay for crap fights and think it's great. Cant tell them nothing no more than you can tell a teenage girl that they're favorite singer is a no talent.

 

A good Ray Robinson story is his first loss (to Lamotta in a 10 rounder) where he gave up 16lbs he rematched him 3 weeks later and had a tune-up fight inbetween. Just a different way of doing things back then.

128-1-1 at his peak Ali called him ''You are the king, the master, my idol,''

Huge power in both hands and an iron chin(never knocked out in 200 odd fights well into his 40's) coupled with being able to fight going forwards and back. Also good at fouling if needed, which was more prevalent back in the day.

was almost 6 feet tall as well and had a long reach 72-74 i've seen it on old tapes. He was super technical and had an insane fight IQ too.

 

He dominated for quite some time back in the days when the talent pool was deep, and clearly had a bunch of impressive physical and technical tools. We’ll never know how he’d do today but assuming he’d be mediocre is kind of weird.

 

Canelo would get eaten by Robinson.

 

Jake Lamotta quote:

“I fought Sugar Ray half a dozen times, and won all but 5 of them.”

 

Top 10 is as good as it gets, beyond that is too subjective. Robinson is in my top 3.

 

I'm not sure he beats the guys OP mentioned, but if you judge him within the context of his era, hes probably top 5. The length of his career and volume of fights he had was ridiculous, and its not like he was just fighting bums either.

 

Alot of things are different between eras. Not just training methods, nutrition, politics in negotiation, even accomplishments are harder to compare because different world champs in a single weight class, and there are more weight classes as well while we all pretend we know who is ducking who based on some journalist’s words that never boxed, the fucking champs get to influence ring size, boxing glove features and dates and more lol.

with all respect to the simplton’s in this forums who actually believe title fight are agreed on by one twitter posts, or the even more ignorant who think nutrition in a nutshell is steak and veggies or the arm chair couch potatoes that think training ia just hit the mats and do push ups lol. I was shocked there’s people like that on here .

anyway, kind of got side-tracked, but to give a vague yet best answer I can, striking majority of boxing historians still hold the original sugar ray at goat status, some of which lived to see him fight live and the fighters u listed and write books about it.

 

An all time great and more experience than the entire WW division currently has. Warrior in anyera.

 

If you consider the amount of fights he had, how active he was, his natural size, and the level of competition he beat to me he is arguably the P4P greatest. Imagine a lighter faster RJJ who never fell off but still went up in weight while fighting well over twice as much. Fighting like 4-6 times a year.

It's hard to take that from him for guys who stayed at reallly light weights and only fought once a year.
Raybdam near has 200 pro fights I think

 

1. McGregor
2. Pulver
3. Maldonado
4. Salka
5. Robinson

 

"I fought Sugar Ray so many times, i got diabetes"

 

It's never made sense to me to lock an athlete in his own time and then ask how he'd do against the best from several decades after. All the training methods, knowledge, science, video, equipment, ideas and concepts evolve so much.

 

Top 3-5ish

 

TS,if you haven't watched the hbo documentary on ray i'd advise you to do so. It gives you everything you need to know as a primer on the greatest fighter who ever lived. I do think Sugar Ray Leonard, Hagler and Hearns make for great matches for ray and perhaps Hagler could beat him at middleweight because Ray at middleweight lost a lot. It's hard to tell. I wouldn't necessarily call ray the greatest middleweight ever, that's where he was already on a long slow, decline and had most of his losses.