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WHY...do boxing experts 40 years old and under INSIST that Sugar Ray Robinson was hands down the best fighter ever.... "Ray was the best bar none"...."everybody knows Sugar Ray Robinson was the greatest ever"..........(he may have been but this is not my point)....why do they say this when all they have ever seen of him is films of him as a middleweight when his record was kind of average..... we've all seen the films of him with Lamotta, Basilio, Fullmer, etc....THAT wasn't the best boxer ever, it was before that where he made his mark.... and all the old time guys say so and that's great...but now u have boxing guys who are 26 years old who discuss the man and it's like "Oh, hey, sheesh, man. That's no-brainer. Sugar Ray Robinson, best fighter ever. Period, end of story." They have never even really seen the guy and if they are only going by what the read or by what bert Sugar says or by the fights they have seen on ESPN classic, well, I don't watch THAT GUY and say he is the best ever..... Ray Robinson may have been the best fighter ever but that version of him wasn't. I don't know, it just kind of makes me laugh when I see these guys who get so serious when they talk about Ray when all they know about him is what they have heard. You cannot say that Stevie Ray Vaughn or Hendrix or Clapton whoever is "the best ever" if you never heard the guy play, can you???
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Even if you have seen the guy fight, boxing is such a complex sport. There are so many factors that can't be measured in any way. It's like Calzaghe-Lacy. Most of the "experts" picked Lacy to destroy Calzaghe and were horribly wrong. Why? Because the ONLY way to know who is the best of two fighters, is to let them fight. There are so many intangibles that you just cannot predict what's going to happen.
Therefore, claiming that whoever was the best ever is pure bull, IMO -
By that reasoning I couldnt say for sure that Wilfredo Gomez was any good as the only fight I've seen of his was against SRL.
You can say that Robinson was the greatest because of the guys he fought and beat.
What about Sam Langford? Never seen the guy fight but I know he could.Comment
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You can certainly rate fighters based on merit. Who they fought, what they win etc. But saying Sugar Ray Robinson was the best fighter ever, in that context, doesn't mean he'd beat, say a Floyd Mayweather at 147. I'm not saying he wouldn't, I'm saying anyone who claims to "know" either way, is full of it.Comment
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Robinson was 131-3-1-1, before he retired on of those loses was against Lamotta who weighed 16 pounds more than him, but went on to beat him again and again after, but then what all silly boxers do, is come back, thats when he began losing.Comment
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Wilfred BENITEZ fought Sugar Ray, not GOMEZ..and if u saw that fight then you certainly can say the guy was good because he fought very well that night. People say SRR was the best, they fawn over him, they talk about his awesome skills and they have never seen him and it is definitely based on what they have heard so many times from so many people..my only point is that people dont make up their own minds about the guy based on what they see because most of them have never seen him....THINK ABOUT IT, it is ridiculous.Comment
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It's a fine point Mr. Scully and one that I will take on board. In the specific context that you mention I have been guilty. However you also must understand that the vast majority of ALL historical 'fact' comes from 2nd hand (at least) testimony which is then corrobarated by supplementary evidence.
So it is in science and many other fields that as much supplementary evidence is applied to a specific subject and then a theory is presented, then it is compared with as much as is known to test it as a theory.
I have often heard throughout boxing circles that SRR was the 'best'. Sure it is a qualitative term but you hear it and you think 'Oh yeah? what was so great?' Then you read other opinion, check his records, read accounts written AT THE TIME, watch what recorded evidence you have and try to fit it to the facts.
I understand that it is impossible to truly, objectively PROVE that he was the greatest boxer of all time, however with as much as is known about him I find it easy to say that I know of no fighters who have matched his exploits.
That doesn't mean he was the best but who can say they are better?Comment
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I get it.
Reminds me of how annoying I find it when old timers say stuff like "They don't make 'em like they used to.", when in reality every single aspect of the fighters has evolved since the 40s, 50s etc.
I hate the way people disregard the current crop of fighters, like "Oh (insert random fighter from decades past) would clean the whole division up if he was around today."
People should be more grateful for what's here now and the era of boxing they're currently witnessing.Comment
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Iceman, can you tell me when you were an amateur, what kind of training did you do the last 7 days leading up to the fight? How hard did you go, how many rounds, what kind of roadwork, etc. Thanks for your input.Comment
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The problem is that theway it is now NOBODY wil ever be able to be called greater than Robby because the legnd has grown so big. I read an article today where a guy who is only like 27 years old was saying how "Ray Robinson is without a doubt the best fighter that ever lived, end of discussion." Now what is he basing that on? Peopl emake it out to be as if Leonard, Jones etc would have NO chance with him, like he would just walk right through them like they were nothing. People REALLY believe that, to0, despite the fact that u can see him as a middleweight (where he would have matched with RJ) and he clearly had flaws to his game. He was obviously great but I just think that the high majority of those that tout him as such are basing it on what other people say. People that saw him back then had never seen anything like RR and they wrote glowingly about him....but could you imagine of Hagler, Hearns and RJ were around at 160 pounds in the days of Graziano, Zale, Basilio and Fullmer??. Love them or hate them, each one of those guys gives RR much more trouble at 160 then Basilio.Comment
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