Sugar Ray Seales How good was he? I know his career ended very early due to eye injuries, but how good was he? How good was he expected to be?
Sugar Ray Seales was the darling of Saturday afternoon Amateur bouts on National Television, with the U.S. Boxing Team, 1971/1972. 139 lbs. Light Welterweight. Always a guranteed winner. Very fast hands and slick boxer.
As i recall there was some concern about the quality of seales vision some time before he retired, as an ametuer his slick moves could give anyone trouble over the 3 rounds distance, but against the mean junk yard dogs of the pro game it was always going to be hard for this Sugar to remain sweet over the longer distances, Alan Minter had some Early Trouble when Boxing with Seales, But once he started applying pressure he soon found the punches to cause the stoppage, a good boxer but lacked that little piece of the Jigsaw to compete for long in top world class.
As the only American Gold Medalist from Munich, I think the handling and promotion of Seales was botched. Ray himself made a point of mentioning that his amateur pedigree wasn't as highly emphasized as it might have been. He achieved at least one other unique achievement. Nobody else went the distance with Hagler twice, although he paid dearly for that transgression the third time around.
Ray Seales best weight was 154 lbs. on that 6' 1" frame. Hard to imagine him at 139 lbs., as he was a skinny 'string-bean'. His big win in 1974, KO 2 over John L. Sullivan should have catapulted him into a Junior Middleweight Title shot, against either Oscar Albarado or Koichi Wajima. The fight versus John L. Sullivan was for the American Junior Middleweight Title (another one of those ?? titles)
Not sure what 'Ring Magazine' had against Sugar Ray Seales. The 1981 Year End rankings listed him at #8,,,,,,,,,, March 1982 Edition. The first time he was ever in their 'year end ratings'. In 1974, Ring Magazine finally had a Top 10 Ranking for Junior Middleweight. Clearly he was Top 10 material in the 154 lb. division, where most his fights were fought at.
