How did Ray Robinson navigate such a gifted path as a pro ?

Your profile says that you are an historian but you are saying that LaMotta wasn't a top guy?, also, Robinson fought Gavilan, Armstrong, Zivic, Graziano, Turpin, Basilio, Fullmer, Angott and many other top fighters during his career, I guess that you don't know who they are.

 

SRR had a rare mix of all word skills and charisma in and out of the ring. Robinson seemed to glide across the ring when he moved. You could say his skills and charisma, combined with a fan-friendly style transcended race even in his own time.

Did Marketing help? I think so. When did he leave the name Walker Smith behind and become Sugar Ray Robinson?

 

Nearly all of you fine posters have expressed yourselves most eloquently, but I'll put it more succinctly...SRR succeeded as he did because he whipped the asses of those he stepped into the ring with and enjoyed his work "whilst" doing it. That's the reason why he was the greatest P4P.

 

Nearly all of you fine posters have expressed yourselves most eloquently, but I'll put it more succinctly...SRR succeeded as he did because he whipped the asses of those he stepped into the ring with and enjoyed his work "whilst" doing it. That's the reason why he was the greatest P4P.

 

Its funny that youll pick apart LaMotta and say Burley was begging for a fight with Robinson but ignore that Burley brought zero financial capital to the table, nobody but Burley was asking for that fight and the black murderers row all lost to guys Robinson beat. Again, the argument for those guys is this goofy hipster revisionist idea that Williams was great because he beat Cocoa, Cocoa was great because he drew with Burley and beat Williams, etc. If these guys were ducked by the top dogs and only got great by fighting each other how exactly were they better than the guys Robinson actually did fight? Its a circular argument because their supposed greatness rests on beating each other. Cocoa Kid had nearly 40 losses and a dozen draws by the time a Robinson fight made sense and some of those losses came to guys Robinson beat. Why is he better than Zivic?? Likewise Williams, et al.

Ive got a better idea. Why dont you go through the list of black fighters you think were unbeatable and lay out for us why they were better than the guys Robinson actually did fight and also when there was a legitimate call by the press, the public, and promoters for a fight between them and Robinson, e specific point of time with documentation to back it up, and then show me how Robinson ducked them. My guess is we will be waiting here a long time.

I suggest before calling Armstrong a shell you go back and study his record he fought and defeated 4 top contenders immediately preceeding Robinson. He was one of the top contenders if not the top contender when Robinson beat him and continued winning after Robinson beat him. He may not have been prime but lets not tear him down in an attempt to build up the flavor of the month.

Robinsons resume pales compared to Moore, Burley, and Charles? Pfff. Thats actually funny. On one hand youll argue Burley was avoided, meaning his resume is devoid of the top guys, and other hand youll say said shallow resume trumps Robinsons. Nope, sorry, doesnt work like that. Thats the same bull**** argument used for guys like Jeanette and McVey who have relatively anemic records outside of their round robins with each other and yet we are supposed to believe that they were superior to their white contemporaries despite the fact that a guy like Langford who was their obvious master wasnt always obviously better than the white guys who fought him. What makes Moores record at the time so much better? He was losing consistently when he fought the guys you think were so great. I asked before, without answer, and Ill ask again: When exactly was Robinson supposed to fight Moore? Or Charles for that matter? Its bizzare, why arent we criticising Sugar Ray Leonard for not fighting Saad in 1980. Why dont we criticise Monzon for not going after Frazier? Robinson didnt have to fight MWs. He wasnt going after the MW title until YEARS later. Those were bonus fights because they were big paydays, the fans were interested, he needed fights, and Robinson was challenging himself and in so doing he picked some of the toughest names in the world at the time. He could have drawn the line at 147 and never crossed it so the idea that he was somehow ducking people, had it easy, or whatever is just plan weird.

 

But who were these imaginary brutal opponents? All of the guys you mention had losses to guys Robinson beat, had numerous losses, or only proved their supposed greatness by fighting and winning/losing numerous times to each other. The only exception to this is Charles who as I stated was fighting 30 pounds north of Robinson. Again, who was supposedly better than the guys Robinson fought and when was the push for those fights? I see Cocoa Kid or Williams, or even Moore and in the 30s and 40s I see a lot of losses on their records and some of those losses came to guys either nowhere near as good as Robinson or even to guys Robinson beat and Im supposed to believe that they were so much better than the guys Robinson fought?

 

Oh please, Ezzard Charles was 21, largely unknown, and had exactly one quality win to his name when he first fought Burley and there was only a 6 lb difference then. Dont act like Burley was taking this major risk. Charles only looks good at that moment in time in hindsight. Burley had 60 fights to his name and was in his physical and professional prime at the time. Dont act like Burley jumped out of his division and fought this top rated prime killer. He didnt. If you cant look at that fight within the context of the day it took place and say it was a risk then it wasnt and at that time on paper with what we knew of Charles that wasnt a risk.

No, he didn't. He didn't fight LaMotta in 44. They fought once in 42, twice in 43, twice in 45, and once in 51. By 1943 Charles was already a top rated LHW. Go look it up. By January 1943 the NBA had Charles in the top 3 LHW. The following month Ray weighed in at 144 fighting Jake and the month after that Charles weighed 168 fighting Lloyd Marshall. That's 24 pounds difference and Charles would never weigh that low again. We can keep going. In 1942 when Ray first fought LaMotta Charles fought the same month outweighing Ray by 20 pounds and facing a heavyweight. When he fought LaMotta those ONLY three times that in some bizarro universe he could have fought Charles LaMotta weighed 157 and change and 160 and change. Still for all intents and purposes a MW. You want us to believe that it was just criminal that Burley had to fight a green unknown Charles at a 6 pound deficit but that Robinson should have taken that 6 pounds and tacked on another 14 on top of it and taken on a much more polished Charles.

More to the point Charles was inactive from early 1943 until 1946 and dropped from the rankings completely, in fact for part of that time he wasn't even in the country because he was serving in Europe. That's not Robinsons fault. That's not Robinson using his voodoo to avoid a tough fight. So again, when exactly was this fight EVER talked about for you to pretend that Robinson somehow used his leverage to avoid a difficult fight with Charles. That's what you cant seem to grasp. LaMotta was a very a popular fighter all over the country, was highly rated, and was a middleweight AND was actually active and present. Charles was a highly rated LHW, two divisions north of Robinson and didn't have anybody bankrolling a fight like that. So I fail to see the comparison.

How would Charles be viewed if he was thrashed by Robinson?? That's the problem you not only want to essentially pretend this mythical matchup was a viable fight when in reality it wasn't but you also just blindly assume Charles would beat Robinson when in fact Robinson would have been the best fighter he faced to that point and if Marshall, Overlin, and Tunero can beat Charles then I think Robinson can pull the trick. See that's the thing. Your guy doesn't just have to GET the fight to win it. He also has to fight a guy who was at that point the best guy he had fought then or maybe ever and Charles was not unbeatable despite your protestations to the contrary.

Again, when Burley was calling out Robinson he couldnt even headline a card in his own hometown (which is where they wanted the fight staged incidentally). When he fought Charles the first time it was an undercard fight. The second was a main event that was originally scheduled to be a semi and Burley stunk the joint out so bad that they called him timid and dull. He didn't fight again in Pittsburgh for over three years and when he returned it wasn't as a conquering hero but on an undercard. So call me skeptical if I think a dull undercard fighter calling out the biggest name south of HW looks like a guy desperate for press and a payday.

Sorry but those guys not getting fights against great fighters like Robinson in a timely fashion isn't some shield or proof that they automatically get those wins. The reverse is entirely possible, they get those fights and they come out with a lot more losses than they had against the same retreads they kept fighting. Id love to know what a 165 pound Charles would do with a prime LaMotta or what a Burley-Robinson match looks like. Does Charles punish the uber tough LaMotta or does LaMotta use his pressure and activity to keep Charles on the backfoot and outpoint him? Does Burley time the speed and finesse of Robinson or does Robinson use his greater speed and power to box Burley's ears off and keep him honest. Every fighter cant fight every other fighter in history. It doesn't work like that. But simply because some fights that kinda sorta look like maybe at a very narrow window they could have been made by some imaginary promoter who actually had an interest in staging the match and the money to back it and then it didn't come off doesn't mean that one fighter was ducking another or used his leverage to avoid a tough fight.

 

Great point. There are a lot of fighters who say 'he ducked me' when there was little opportunity for a fight to take place. A modern example that is relatively comparable is Mike McCallum. He claims that Hearns, Leonard and Duran ducked him. But did they? McCallum, despite being an excellent fighter and a titlist, had no name at the time and no leverage to face these fighters, who had each other to fight.

Which promoter would say at that point, 'Well, for Hearns' next opponent we have Duran, Hagler or McCallum. There's no money and public interest in McCallum, so let's make that fight." Yet McCallum still claims that he was ducked. By the time he established himself as a legitimate champion around 1987, all those fighters had moved on.

Robinson had star power, but this wasn't based on some arbitrary distinction, it was down to him as a fighter. Burley, as an example, doesn't appear to have had a particularly crowd-pleasing style and he had to take a long, hard road. He might have wanted to fight Robinson but he didn't have any more right to expect that fight than a bunch of other fighters. I could be wrong, but I just don't get the sense that Robinson's record was massaged in any way, regardless of his elevated status. He was a great, great fighter who fought and beat other great fighters. He just didn't fight everyone around at the time, but it's definitely a leap to call that 'ducking'.

 

One point to make is that Robinson was known as a tough negotiator and was smart about contracts. Dude owned a block of businesses in Harlem.

 

An excellent discussion. Klompton2 ably presented the pro-Robinson position which I support, so I can only elaborate.

Charles & Moore--these men were simply not close to Robinson in weight. Charles is easy to compare as he and SRR were a mere 2 months apart in age and began their careers in the same year, 1940. In 1940 Robinson's top listed weight for 6 fights in the Boxing Register was 135 lbs. Charles' only listed weight was 162. In 1941 Charles fought 9 fights with weights between 161 & 164. Robinson fought 20 (!) fights with listed weights between 134 and 141, only twice reaching 140. In 1942 Robinson fought 14 times with weights ranging from 141 to 146. Charles fought twelve times with weights ranging from 160 (his career low) to 166. He beat Joey Maxim, rated at heavy, twice that year. In 1943, Charles fought twice, while in the army, with weights of 165 & 168. Robinson also went into the army after six fights with a peak weight of 148. Charles would be in the army and not fighting at all in 1944 & 1945. When he came back in 1946 he was heavier, fighting 10 times with weights between 169 and 175. He only weighed less than 170 once. Robinson in 1946 fought 16 times with weights between 146 & 156 (but that 156 came after a three month layoff and otherwise Robinson never fought above 152). By 1949 Charles was the heavyweight champion and Robinson the welterweight champion. Charles twice fought for the heavyweight championship with weights above 190 lbs. Robinson's top career weight was 165.

I think it utterly crazy to believe Robinson's management should have matched him with Charles.

Moore was slightly smaller than Charles, but even he fought his last four fights in 1944 above 170 at a time when Robinson was still a welter.

 

looking at the middles from 1941 on in The Ring annual rankings
in 1941
Champion--Tony Zale
1---Georgie Abrams
2---Ezzard Charles
(Abrams goes into Military service until 1946. Charles moves up into the light-heavy ratings)

1942
Champion--Tony Zale (in military service)
1---Archie Moore
2---Charley Burley
3---Holman Williams
6---Jake LaMotta

1943
Champion--Zale
1---Jake LaMotta
2---Holman Williams
Burley--unrated this year

1944
Champion--Zale
1---Holman Williams
2---Jake LaMotta
3---Charley Burley

1945
Champion--Zale
1---Holman Williams
2---Charley Burley
3---Jake LaMotta

1946
Champion--Tony Zale (active again)
1---Jake LaMotta
2---Charley Burley
3---Rocky Graziano

1947
Champion--Rocky Graziano
1---Tony Zale
2---Bert Lytell
3---Marcel Cerdan
4---Steve Belloise
5---Jake LaMotta

1948
Champion--Marcel Cerdan
1---Bert Lytell
2---Steve Belloise
3---Jake LaMotta

1949
Champion--Jake LaMotta
1---Sugar Ray Robinson
2---Dave Sands
3---Robert Villemain

What stands out to me is that LaMotta is pretty consistently rated above Burley and Burley is never the #1 contender. Williams and Lytell were #1 contenders but LaMotta holds wins over both around the same time they were beating Burley. I think it more than iffy to rate Burley above LaMotta, and Robinson is simply in another league. Burley was competitive with the top men he fought, but never able to put daylight between himself and his peers as Robinson did.