Do you feel Ray Robinson is overrated at 160?

A little imo. I think in terms of ranking, only Greb can have a right to be over Robinson.

 

Ray Robinson was very good at 160 for a very long time. On his best day he beats anyone at middleweight. Up to 1956-1958 people will excuse his losses with either he was old 35+ or he had over 100 fight you can't win them all.
My response to this is that if you take care of your body as Robinson did than 35-40 is not that old in terms of sports proformance goes. Jersey Joe Wallcot, Archie More, Bernard Hopkins and Glen Johnson are examples of this. At the end of 1958, Robinson was 141-6-2. Of the 6 losses 3 of them came in middleweight world championship fights. All of them against guys he is better than. His other two losses were an atempt to gain the championship at 175. and a comeback fight after retireing in 1952 for a few years.
If you argue that he was past his best whenhe came back in 1955. I disagree with you. However it means that his record takes a bit of a hit if you only consider him up to 1952. At this point he is only 3-1 in middleweight championship fights. He is 7-3 in middleweight championship fights through 1958, and 7-6-1 overall.
If the question is who wins on their best day Robinson or anyone else at 160. I would pick Robinson more than anyone else and those I think can beat him it would be very close. However if we are talking resume. When I look at resume. I look at not only who they fought but who they beat. I think his status as the greatest at 160 is up for debate.

 

IMHO..SRR's accomplishments at 160 simply do not measure up to guys like Hagler,Monzon,Hopkins..who hardly lost any fights at that weight...But as some of y'all had mentioned before..on his best day,outside of maybe Roy Jones,I don't see anyone beating him..simply too many tools on his day...Roy Jones,because of his physical skills is the only guy I see good enough to make ray miss with alot of his shots...whie fast enough to catch SRR with good ones.

Greatest MW?? No..but Top5?Absolutely.P4P Greatest fighter ever??No doubt.

 

Overrated ...? It's tough to "overrate" such a shockingly good fighter.

I'd say that he is overrated just a bit by purists who seem to assume that he was at MW what he was at WW. I remember The Ring Magazine's MW tournament from about 20 years ago and they had him winning against his all-time peers at WW, which I'd agree to, but then they had him taking MW honors too, which I would dispute. Heavily. He ain't getting by Greb and I ain't so sure about Hagler or Monzon either.

In terms of MW accomplishments, he's up there, but dropping one to Turpin and then playing hot tomale with the likes of Basilio and Fullmer have to affect his dominance rating.

 

Absolutely.

Doubt.

 

one of the best I've ever seen. Only Hagler, Greb, Monzon, Jones were his better

 

I don't believe he's necessarily overrated at middleweight due to the number of fights he had at that specific weight.You just can't get through that number of opponents unscathed.

 

Carlos Monzon (100)had half the professional fights SRR(200) had.Marvin Hagler(67) had a third.Hopkins even fewer than that.The wear and tear over the course of a career has to take its toll.Hagler's my 2nd favorite ever(after Duran) btw.

 

Completely agree. He was still a superb fighter at middleweight, but he was certainly more beatable there than he was at welterweight. That shouldn't be viewed as a knock on Robinson given that he was as close to unbeatable at Welterweight as anyone could be.

 

Possibly a tiny bit, I don't believe he is No1 but, he is definitely Top5 I personally have him at #4 with Hagler, Greb and Monzon ahead, with Greb #1 and Hagler and Monzon is a coin toss in my opinion.

 

Ray Robinson was at his zenith as a welterweight, as we all know. I was fotunate to have seen him at his greatest..Poetry in motion,was he.
He became a middleweight,when he was getting in the middle thirties, a time when every fighter is on the downside..Having said that Ray Robinson as a middleweight,
can never be overated..Not the relic of the past when he fought Joey Archer, but the
still dangerous, Robinson that flattened tough [but limited] Gene Fullmer, with a left
hook-uppercut, for the ages...Was he at that STAGE the best middleweight ever.?
No.There were a few that would have whipped THIS Robbie,when at their best.
Greb [at any middleweight stage], Mickey Walker, who decimated tommy milligan,
Freddie Steele, before his breastbone injury was almost unbeatable,and probably
Marvin Hagler. Monzon, ???
But Ray Robinson at age 35 ,might have been as good or better than any other 35
year old 160 pounder, and that's good enough for me...

 

By far, Ray's most meaningful defeat at 160 was to Turpin, where he looked jaded after a frenetic European tour. The rematch matters more, as both were on full alert. After regaining the title in New York, he was on his way to what clearly would have been his one dominant and substantial reign at 160. It can be startling to realize that his only three successful defenses at middleweight were Olson II, Graziano and Olson IV. He retired for three years after Maxim. From Turpin II in 1951 to Gene Fullmer I in 1957, I do not believe he would have been dethroned, not by Turpin in a rubber match, Castellani, Gavilan in a third tryst, or Olson, even before Bobo got softened up by the Mongoose. An uninterrupted reign of half a dozen years or so would have enhanced his resume at 160 considerably, but this could only have happened if he continued after Graziano and Maxim.

Such is life. Kearns squandered Dempsey's prime with exhibitions (Jack was the highest paid athlete of 1925 without even defending his title, so maybe the end justifies the means), Tunney got out when he might have been able to hold the title for years, WW II deprived us of four years of prime Louis, an imposed three and a half year exile cost us the best of Ali, and Robby truncated his middleweight legacy by quitting after Maxim.

The flip side is that Robby dominated master boxer Maxim over 13 sweltering rounds while weighing under the middleweight limit, and could have won simply by having his seconds prop him up in his corner and cover up for two rounds. Joey won only three of the first 13 rounds. Could Hagler or Monzon have done that to a reigning HOF ATG LHW champion while weighing under 160? SRR does get a fair bit of mileage and credibility out of that loss despite how Maxim-Robinson ended, and he deserves it. If that bout had been rescheduled for cooler weather (as it should have been), he would have retired as a triple division champion. (And if Angott had tried to defend against Ray at 135 prior to WW II, that would have been four undisputed crowns.)

Fleischer's all time MW rating of Robby at five, behind Ketchel, Ryan, Greb and Walker is fairly reserved and measured. If Ray is indeed overrated at 160, perhaps that is a backlash against where Fleischer placed him. Everybody ranked above Ray at 160 dealt with heavyweights, a territory Robinson never dared enter in competition. (Ketchel was dead at 24, and I suspect got much credit from Nat for what still might have been had he lived long enough to retire from boxing.)