Is Sugar Ray Leonard the complete boxer?

When you mention his inability, do you mean him trying to do it and failing or a fight where he should have tried it?

 

The question is for GP.

 

Fair enough.

 

leonard never scored of the back foot whilst moving hagler could.

Hagler worked of the back foot surprisingly well but i cant remember the fight (i must sound like a BSer but im not)

I have no doubt leonard had better adaptability than hagler but IMO im judging this purely on technical skill

 

Leonard lacked nothing, he was as complete as they come.

 

Whitaker was good at that, he fought a large amount of his career on the back foot tho he wasnt as COMPLETE as the more attack minded Leonard.

Ps. The Benitez fight wasnt even close, Leonard completely outboxed him then put the icing on the cake with the TKO with 5 or 6 seconds left.
Whitaker-Benitez would be a great fight, not action packed but one for the purests, hard to call too.

 

I agree, Ray Robinson is as close to perfect as we have seen thus far.

 

I still say Leonard has it over the original in terms of elusiveness, but that may be more to style than anything else. But, they're both pretty complete as far as I'm concerned.

 

Technique and timing wise he wasn't as good as Duran, defensively he wasn't as good as a Whitaker or Mayweather. As a package he was phenomenal however

 

The icing on the cake with the terrible, quite possibly corrupt stoppage you mean.

 

For real? Leonard sure didn't need any help from officials in that fight. It was all his.

 

I agree with the majority of this statement. I don't hold Mayweather in as high esteem as you however. When Leonard had to (vs Hagler) or chose to (Benitez, Duran II), he showed great defensive ability. I think the competition faced plays a major part in how good Mayweather looked in comparison to Leonard. He never met anyone of the caliber of Benitez, Duran, Hearns, or Hagler. Duran showed great defensive abillity despite his style. Better than Leonard? Possibly in my opinion.
I find the discussion in this thread about fighting off the back foot extremely interesting. Is it that Leonard couldn't fight this way or that he chose not to? He was a stalker for the most part (vs Hagler and Duran notable exceptions).

 

He was great, but i can't see how anyone can think the stoppage was anything other than garbage.

 

not a complete fighter tho against the likes of Price and Green certainly appeared so. Once he faced Hearns & Norris, we found the truth and that his big weakness was in hitting a moving target, difficulty handling speedy opponents. In fact, against an opponent with the speed of Norris, couldnt handle them at all.

Chin not very good and career way too short; not enough fights against major superstars.

On the bright side, had some pretty good weapons: left hook right cross and great running ability (uno mas)

I wouldnt make too much out of the Benitez or Mayweather fights. Neither of them did anything to win such as for example, fight back.