By David Martinez / Boxing Historian
One of the most asked questions that is asked of me is – who do I think is the greatest boxer of all time?
That is very easy for me to answer, in my opinion – it is – Sugar Ray Robinson.
At the peak of his career he was the best ever, and although we have had many greats in boxing – he was the greatest.
The term “pound for pound” was actually created just for him because of the difficultly to compare boxers from different weight classes, let alone from different eras.
Sugar Ray could do it all – box, punch, had a great chin and tremendous will to win.
He lost only one bout in his first 123 as a professional, a time span of eleven years (1940-1951), a ten round decision, in which he reversed five times in his career to Jake LaMotta, a.k.a. “The Raging Bull”.
Here are two short “excellent” videos to enjoy of Sugar Ray Robinson. Please copy each web address and paste it into your address bar in order to see the video.
Part 1
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9FmVXjfefs]
Part 2
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZg7BqJtQDE]
I have also included a photo that I personally took of him with his second wife Millie, when they came to my hometown of Santa Barbara, California for a amateur “kids” boxing show that I was part of in 1986.
One Question. How could he have so much grace and terror at the same time?Even today NOBODY comes close. I often here people say that his best performance’s were at welter weight and there is not much video footage of that. Is this ture?
Sugar Ray ALL THE WAY!! To be honest, we probably never saw the best years of The Sugar man because just as poster Ray Cerda said. It’s a shame that there’s just not much footage of Ray’s PRIME years. By the time he won the middleweight title already about at age 30 and had over 120 fights, losing only ONCE, to LaMotta, whom he eventually defeated FIVE TIMES!!