Who is greater P4P fighter Joe Louis or Sugar Ray Leonard?

Leonard for me. Fought and defeated a better level of competition. Leonard also had the hand-speed and foot-speed advantage.

 

Louis by a small distance.

 

I think the entire world of Joe Louis. But a pound for pound argument would have to go in favor of Leonard for me. While Louis had many more world title fight wins and overall professional bouts, Ray’s Top 3-4 wins top Louis’s best victories by some distance. Then there’s the factor of Leonard being a multiple division champion and Olympic gold medalist.

 

When it gets to the level of absolute GOATS of the game that those two are at, there's no decisive argument either way really. Louis' longevity or Leonard's more eye catching individual wins? A *** paper between them. Same as comparing Duran to Holyfield or Archie Moore to Hagler.

 

I usually only consider amateur achievements as an added bonus

 

I love Evander but there's a distance between him and Duran, Roberto is arguably top ten lb for lb all time. I cant make that case for Holy. Moore and Marvin however is a close one.

 

I have Louis @ no 10 and Leonard @ no 14 on my atg list so i voted for Joe

 

Louis #9 and SRL #17 for me, Noel.

 

It's Louis for me.

Louis has 25 world title fights compared to 10 for Leonard.

Louis has something like 30 wins against top 10 ranked opposition.

I'd gather Leonard has about half the amount of wins against top 10 opposition.

Leonard has very good quality to his resume despite not fighting that much.

But the sheer bulk of Louis's resume with the longevity and filler is too much to overcome IMO.

 

Fair enough Greg, in reality i could rank Leonard anywhere from 12 to 20 so certainly not disagreeing with you

 

Leonard by a lot but it's hard to compare heavyweights to non heavyweights

 

Agreed.