What Did Sugar Ray Robinson Have, That Ali Didn't..?

Robinson constantly jabbed keeping his opponents off-balance and set up brilliant combos off his jab too.

 

La Motta actually out-jabbed Robi in the early rounds of their final fight.

 

I don’t think Terrell was good period and outboxing him isn’t really a badge of honour. He spent the entire Ali fight plodding in with his hands up and then rabbit punching LOL.

Past prime? Maybe a little but I’d argue the best version of Ali was in the 70s. He developed many more layers to his game and was better for different reasons that were more useful. To me anyways.

I didn’t say Ali was incapable of jabbing with Liston just that it wasn’t exactly a fight to showcase his ability to jab. He won going a different avenue. The Norton fights all showed some flaws and one of them was between his ears in regards to jabbing, I don’t think Robinson would be undone by the techniques employed by guys like Norton. But that’s my final say.

technique? there’s endless ways to jab for different reasons at different times. Ali didn’t jab the same way every single exchange and neither did Robinson but both used their left hand wonderfully.

 

ok but that's not really comparable to having your license and title stripped and facing possible prison

 

An oldie but always a goodie.

 

Ironically, the axiom “A good big man beats a good small man” might hold true in reverse when viewing fighters in P4P terms.

The perception being that the bigger men, on average, will naturally fall short in perceived all round skills than their smaller counterparts.

However, the P4P concept can be flipped over somewhat when considering the greater obstacles that present with greater size - and we’ve all heard the observations “Well, he certainly is fast and moves well for a BIG man”.

For all Ray’s terrific movement - did he hold the same relative advantage in that dept over his like sized opponents as prime Ali did over his opposition?

 

We disagree in just about everything here, so let's just leave it at that.

 

Yes, while it was a terrific performance by Robinson, I'm not very impressed by his jab in that one.

 

Yes.

 

Agreed but it's still an impediment, albeit one faced by just about everyone else.