Sugar Ray Robinson; ducking Burley & who else?

[SlySlickSmooth]

Sugar Ray Robinson: "I'm too pretty to fight Burley."

True statement? Did Robinson duck other fighters?


Was the fight really even possible between Robinson and Burley? By looking at BoxRec you can see that Robinson was still fighting Welterweight fights by the time Burley left.
I believe the fight could of happened at WW in the early 40s, but who really knows?

[Sugar Adam Ali]

This topic has been talked about alot...

I doubt robinson ducked anyone, its more his management trying to sell the most tickets..
In that era Black vs Black didnt sell as well as Black vs irish, italian, etc
I think that is the main reason robinson didnt fight the murder's row, as they didnt bring the gate money that lamotta, Basilio, etc

[AntonTheMeh]

Ray is my favorite all time fighter. He ducked plenty of fighters.

[soul_survivor]

if he ducked Burley and still went on to fight HOFers at middleweight...that's some stupid kind of duck lol

edit: just had a look at boxrec for a laugh, from 1947-1950 (when Burley retired), the great man was clearly years past his best and fighting some woeful opponents, it's not even funny how bad they were.

In that same time period, Robinson defended the welterweight title a handful of times against some very good opposition and won a portion of the middleweight crown in 1950, just as Burley was retiring.

When was Robinson supposed to have fought Burley? I know there was talk of Burley coming out of retirement but who would really be calling for a fight between Robinson and a washed up pro whos last meaningful fight was some 3-4 years earlier. It's ridiculous to call that a duck.

[greeh]

Ray is my favorite all time fighter. He ducked plenty of fighters.

Yeah, Leonard was a coward.

[Humean]

They probably could have fought an over the weight fight during the war years but there was no money in them fighting. There really is very little significance in all this Robinson ducked Burley stuff. It neither proves that Burley was better than Robinson or something similar nor that Robinson somehow wasn't fighting the best. If Robinson truly didn't fight a high proportion of the best of his era then nobody has. By my calculations Robinson fought at least 24 world level opponents, and that was simply in his first career up to 1952.

[Ray Corso]

Read Robinsons career record carefully! Anyone who fought him tough got second and third shots. Hell he fought LaMotta 5 times do you think that was a breeze?
To say that fighters back then all could pick and choose gets silly. Their management called the shots. Fans today have a miss guided idea from watching Wlad and Floyd navigate through who they pick to fight and when.
There was a time that mandatories were not ignored and management called the shots.
I'm not suggesting that Ray didn't have anything to say but I guarantee everyone that management could halt a fighter in his steps once they signed on if they didn't get their way!

I believe the quote of Sugar saying he was to pretty to fight Burley was actually a compliment to Burley and had nothing to do with an outcome from their match up.
Robinson is the best fighter from 147 to 160 that ever lived and feared no boxer. His fights are on film and if you know what your seeing it's easy to agree.
Ray.