Sugar Ray Leonard or Roy Jones Jr....who was better?

[hugh grant]

I had to think about this and then giuve srl the edge. Only cos he beat better fighters.
Its a toss up kind of thing in reality though

[club fighter]

Who considers Hagler vs Leonard to be one of Rays career defining fights? It was at the end of his career, after his retina injury

-Many
-he fought pretty actively for the next 3 years.
-yes, it was after his eye injury

[billeau2]

SRL.




I really irks me when people disregard resume when it's by far the most important metric. A few here want to say that Roy "looked" better based on that ******ed notion of the eye test. Well, let's flip their careers around and see if Roy gets past Duran, Benitez, Hearns, and Hagler. And be honest with yourself, can you see anybody troubling Ray Leonard on Roy's resume?

Wow wonderful post...I could not say it better myself. Ditto for your conclusion. Let me deconstruct a few particularly silly notions.

What evidence is there that Jones would walk through a rangy boxer puncher? Did he fight Nun in a smoker somewhere? Yet we are told that Michael Spinks would never catch him at light heavy.

Ray Leonard was a different size, he could not fight JOnes. And now on to heavy weight gold. Ruiz was such easy pickings and people want to credit him for that. Ridiculous.

Jones was fantastic and his ability to dominate his competition was fantastic, to a point...the point being how limited his competition was. We have no idea how he would have done against rangy guys like Hearns. He did eat up boxer punchers, but Toney might have had an off day.

Technically speaking if Roy had speed and power he was indeed a nightmare for guys who had to put together punches to land vis a vis boxer punchers...BUt against someone with comprable speed, or reach to nullify his speed, or against someone who would keep coming, Roy might have had more problems than he did....Ray fought all those types, with speed the equivalent of Jones and distinguished himself.

Put a different way: When did Jones beat up an elite guy who was not a boxer puncher? Tarver was rangy and even in the first fight, it was a tough fight. Roy was never in against guys who could beat you with reach, or with toughness, until the latter part of his career and then he lost to them. He essentially beat up one type of fighter and people think this translates as him dominating all types of fighters.

[Bjl12]

stop crying...

it was a washout...if hopkins wasn't as tough as he was and didn't have the chin that he has, roy would have stopped him or outclassed him as badly as he did to james toney....a one handed roy at that...

the rounds that they gave to bernard were the rounds that roy didn't do much in, and bernard definitely didn't carry enough one punch power to make roy do anything any different than what he did...bernard just made the fight ugly...

the fight at the time held absolutely no significance until bernard forged his own legacy...swept under the rug...most of you cats probably had to youtube it

Or most sensible people acknowledge RJJ to have been in his prime and BHop to be GREEN since he wouldn't beat Tito for another NINE Y E A R S

[_Rexy_]

-Many
-he fought pretty actively for the next 3 years.
-yes, it was after his eye injury

He only had 5 fights after that over the next ten years...though 3 of those were over the first 4 years, I wouldn’t call that to be “pretty active” especially when in his prime he was fighting almost monthly.

[GrandmasterWang]

Prime Jones would beat the crap out of Prime SRL. Too fast, too big, too powerful.

I see prime Haggler stopping Jones though for whatever reason.

[djtmal]

Or most sensible people acknowledge RJJ to have been in his prime and BHop to be GREEN since he wouldn't beat Tito for another NINE Y E A R S

no...

hopkins fans, the handful that he has, who make up excuses for all of hopkins losses say the jones loss was because he was green...hopkins archilles heel was always guys who could box, move, and sized up well with him (jones, taylor 2x, calzaghe, dawson)

and i'm glad you pointed out the 9 years in between the jones loss and the tito win, because that jones loss not only was a washout in the ring, it washed bernard out of the game for that long until a big $ ww moved up...

if it wasn't for that tournament, hopkins would have fought his whole career in obscurity...

[djtmal]

Prime Jones would beat the crap out of Prime SRL. Too fast, too big, too powerful.

I see prime Haggler stopping Jones though for whatever reason.

@ 160 hagler would have to have the hearns approach to beating roy...

i remember reading a sugar ray interview where he talked about sparring a young roy, and how roy was able to catch him consistently with the same lead left hook that he was able to catch everybody with in his prime...

[club fighter]

He only had 5 fights after that over the next ten years...though 3 of those were over the first 4 years, I wouldn’t call that to be “pretty active” especially when in his prime he was fighting almost monthly.

He fought for 3-4 years and made an ill fated comeback, that's just splitting hairs.

Fact is, there's a couple of documentaries about the Hagler fight, so the bottom line is, it was a pretty important fight in his career for that to happen.

RJJ's dominating fashion still get's my vote tho.

[Bjl12]

Boxing is a weird sport. It turns men into women. Don't believe me? Look through every thread ever and there's at least one delusional fanboy defending "their guy".

This one's for you djtmal you weird little queer