i have heard robinson being quoted that rocky graziano hit him the hardest...and i have also heard him quoted as say artie livine hit him the hardest. has he been quoted as to who was his toughest fight from his own point of view ?
Yep. the second fight with Gavilan is the one for me. Now, his greatest performance (that my eyes witnessed) is versus Fulmer when he was giving Fulmer a boxing lesson at age forty. There were times in the fight that he looked like a dancer, floating around tagging Fulmer at will. Fulmer was running from Robinson for stretches of the middle rounds. Amazing! Next to the is versus Rocky. He beat the pure snot outta Graziano. Graziano knockdown was not clean, and even still, Robinson got right up and finished it.
Ray said he could always beat Lamotta; he simply had to be in shape. Not to mention he gave up teenage pounds (Wltr. vs. Mdl) in his only loss (what? 10-11 years as pro?) only to come back exactly 2-3 weeks later and win a WIDE UD....
I voted Lamotta 6 because his overall performance was masterful, he showed everything & stopped the unstoppable in Lamotta. His clean KO`s over both Fullmer & Graziano are worh a mention too. Ps. Lamotta 2 shouldnt be on the list because thats actually the fight that SRR lost. :good
In that case, cheers for the Ezzard Charles-Joe Louis fight :thumbsup, I watched the entire fight the other night... thats the clearest footage Ive seen yet of Charles, I promised myself I would look more into the mans career by both reading up on him & finding as much footage as possible. Do you have anymore full fights of Charles uploaded ?
I'm pretty sure he thought he could beat just about anybody while in shape. He still called Jake the toughest he ever fought. Robinson got dropped in the fight and one of the judges had him winning by 2 points.