Sugar Ray Loneard Question

Leonard defeated four all time great fighters at or near their primes. That's quality. He dominated everyone else he ever fought. He was an Olympic Gold Medalist. His career was exceptional. I do appreciate your raising the question but it is a matter of quality over quantity. I say he beat better opposition than Robinson or Armstrong did at welter.

 

The retina injury really hurt Leonard's ability to amass wins which I am sure he would have done. Relatively inactive for 5 years at his prime robbed him of the big names. One can see from his skill and guts that he would have dominated the era.

 

In terms of wins you missed Lalonde. Kalule was also a very good LMW champ. So thats 6 top level wins. Some of the contenders he beat coming up may have been titlists today too and had fought for world titles themselves

 

powerpuncher do you really see lalonde as a top level fighter

 

Well he wasnt great, but he was a champ, a top LHW, sort of similar size advantage that Margarito had over Pacquaio but Lalonde is better skilled imo. I would have preferred Leonard to test himself against the best MW contenders but oh well

 

Ray Leonard was an extraordinary boxer with an extraordinary personality.

 

yeah he had a belt but i thought he was the weakest of the light-heavy champs when compared to williams and hill who although both not really established as world champs were far superior fighters to lalonde in my opinion , but then i feel leonard was equally skilled in picking the right opponents as he was in picking the right punches

 

It's a tricky one regarding Lalonde. He was a decent fighter but the size difference makes it an excellent win. The only issue was the BS catchweight that Leonard insisted upon... and the fact that the Alpha clowns gave him 2 world titles for one fight. That bit smelled really bad.

 

Sugar Ray Leonard is without doubt 'THE' greatest fighter of the last 35 years .. Skill, Heart, Courage, he had everything .. Beating Benitez, Duran, Hearns and Hagler is an absolute stellar resume. Give me that list over Pacquiao's anyday .. To beat Benitez, Duran, Hearns and Hagler shows that this is a fighter that can beat a whole range of styles.

Beating these 4 guys alone is a magnificent achievement .. How you can say he's got the weakest resume out of the four kings, i will never know ..

Leonard didnt get beat by the guys that Duran got beat by, Duran got beat by all the other 3, plus Benitez, plus guys like Kirkland Laing - But of course Roberto gets a pass because he's a guy that fight fans love ..

Hearns lost more big fights than he won, plus he got beat by a 2nd stringer like Barkley ..

Hagler's resume is great, his era was better than the Hopkins one the Middleweight division in which he reigned was still a little threadbare of worldclass operators which was why he spent his whole career chasing Leonard ..

Leonard is 'THE' Greatest fighter of the last 35 years, and certainly one of the truly top Welterweights of all time .. All the criticism Ray Leonard gets on here is a joke .. Guys on here love the 'tough guy toilers' like Chavez, Duran, Hagler, Marciano etc because they love to see guys putting in hard work, but put a few Ray Leonard or Roy Jones fights on, let yourselves be taken in by boxing fluidity and perfection .. There'll be other Chavez's, other Hagler's and other Hopkins's eventually, but true artists like Leonard, Jones and Mayweather need to be appreciated as they are a dying breed ....

 

I agree with all but the very, very end. We will see other great artists. But other than that, spot on. Leonards resume is INCREDIBLE. Came out ahead of all of his contemporaries. Only has the loss to Duran when any of them are prime, and no matter how many excuses Duran and his fans pull out, Leonard defeated him almost immediately in a rematch. Loss avenged.

Hagler was past his prime, but so was Leonard, and he was inactive for years. Prime for Prime, he stopped Thomas Hearns, beating him decisively. Proved a class about Wilfredo Benitez. Battered down and stopped a guy who was much, much bigger than him in Lalonde. Kalule is a darn good win too. No resume is his equal for great fighters beaten. Pacquiao can't touch it. Neither can Roy Jones. Their weight jumping is impressive, but Leonard did a bit of weight jumping himself, and doing so, beat fighters he actually wasn't supposed to beat who had ATG legacies of their own. Leonard's equal hasn't been seen since he retired, and only 2 men have even an argument in Jones and Pacquiao.

Just my opinion, but I felt extremely honored to watch Leonard achieve what he achieved growing up. Despite being an absolute ***** in those days, he had the aura of a top 10-20 all time great from day one. And as a massive fan of Hagler, Hearns, and a robust appreciator of Benitez and Duran, anybody who has beaten all 4 is always gonna be high on my appreciated list, even one I really never liked as a person.

 

Hagler was nowhere near his prime as evidenced by Roldan and Mugabi.His reflexes and footspeed were gone at that point,which Leonard knew quite well and is the ONLY reason he chose to fight Marv when he did,because he wanted NOTHING to do with Hagler for the better part of 6 years.

 

Good point but I don't think it was really tricky.I think it was pretty obvious.People forget that when Leonard was teasing Hagler(and the boxing public in general)about the idea of a possible fight years before it actually happened,his manager demanded that the fight for Marvin's middleweight title should be fought at a 154 catchweight.There's a pattern here that no one seems to be able to accept.

 

Legitimate or not,Duran's fans do make those excuses.But Leonard's fans are just as guilty because they always say Leonard fought Duran's fight in the 1st which is why they say that Leonard lost.But the same fans won't admit that Leonard's use of the same tactics is the reason he beat Hearns.