Who was better, Sugar Ray Leonard or Roy Jones Jr?

I’m interested to know who these fighters are that you think can beat Roy at 168.

As for SRL: Duran did it, Hearns nearly did it, SRR probably could’ve done it. I’ll add Burley, Gavilán, and Nápoles to this list.

Roy rarely lost at a round at 168. Duran moved up 2 weight classes to beat SRL in his 1st fight at WW.

 

Roy was the better athlete but Ray was the better fighter with a superior resume.

 

RJJ at 160 and 168 was a legitimate one punch knockout artist.

 

Roy was more talented

But, Ray had great intangibles.

Roy had more title fight wins, but Ray fought all the best competiion. Roy did not.

So, I'll go with Ray as the greater fighter.

 

Not true. Duran had been fighting at 147 lbs since '79. And he had struggled mightily to make 135 for many years.

 

Point taken, thanks for clarifying.

Either way, I don’t see anyone from 154 moving up to fight prime Roy at 168 being remotely competitive.

 

Yep, good point. Duran's last fight at 135 was the unification against DeJesus in January '78 and after that he was pretty much a welterweight. His win over Carlos Palomino came in June '79, a full year before he met Leonard so he was already world ranked at 147.

 

A lot of very sweeping statements here, it's no foregone conclusion either way, two true greats.

Its got to be Roy Jones Jr for me though

 

Yeah, but that's pretty meaningless anyway. The original question was who was the greater fighter. Ray would never have beaten Roy because he was a natural welterweight who moved up and Roy was a natural middleweight who moved up. Nobody in the history of the supermiddleweights would have beaten a prime Roy Jones. But Leonard proved his greatness against fellow great fighters. Jones never met anyone on the level of Leonard's best opposition. He dominated because he was vastly superior to his opposition but the opposition in general (with a few notable exceptions) just wasn't that good.

 

Wow, that's a huge overexaggeration. This is easy? Not at all.

Great fighters? James Toney, Felix Trinidad, Joe Calzaghe, Bernard Hopkins, who else was out there for him? We can't mark fighters down for a lack of opposition for them, I never get the idea of doing that.

He is top 10 all time for me personally

 

Other than Toney and Hopkins, Roy's resume isn't that good.

 

And I think to further the point, RJJ had the opportunity if he wanted to fight the better competition but he passed on it .. Guys like Nunn, etc. He did offer Nunn the fight but the catch was Nunn was only going to make $125,000, are you kidding me?, where as Roy would make at least 3 million. And guys like Pazienza were paid well over a million to fight Roy ... Sorry but that clearly tells me Roy wanted nothing to do with Nunn

 

Im fact stylistically nunn would be a difficult fight for Jones

 

Nunn was way past his best, though

At 168 lbs, Nunn lost to Steve Little.

Roy Jones would easily beat past prime 168 lb. Michael Nunn.

Prime for prime at 160 lbs would have been awesome but Nunn's prime was a bit before Jones was title material at 160 lbs.

 

Yeah, he always weighted the odds in his favour so that it made no sense for the other fighter. I remember in 2002 when the bout with Hopkins was muted, Roy wanted a 60/40 split. Both were undisputed world champions. Roy could have compromised with 55/45 but he wouldn't budge. He wouldn't fight Michalczewski because he wouldn't fight away from home in case he lost via a hometown decision. I don't say that he shouldn't have been trying to seek financial leverage - that's the nature of the business. But he didn't try that hard to make the biggest fights happen.