How should I rate Floyd Robertson ?

he challenged ramos for his title two years prior to his fight with saldivar, lost a controversial decision after an absolute war, he also held the commonwealth featherweight title for three years before making his first title challenge.
that's all i really know about him

 

certainly below Orlando Salido, he was a multiple time champion who fought some of the best of his era
rocky Juarez is probably closer to the mark, though Juarez did put up a good fight against more great opponent than Robertson, so probably below him as well
Steve Cruz and Mitsunori Seki who both had one great performance against a great fighter, but lost decisively in their other title fights are probably more on the mark of where you should rank him

 

Seki was a step above Robertson imo and beat better fighters like Suh, Jamito, Chionoi etc even though the latter gave Ramos a much better fight. He (Seki) was an excellent fighter and one of the unluckiest of his generation. He didn't lose decisively in all his other title shots either - the Kingpetch and Winstone fights were both close and controversial. A shade more luck and he could have been the champion at both flyweight and featherweight. Outside of Ramos and Saldivar he was only really beaten conclusively by Medel, who he was rather unwisely thrown in with in his first fight at bantam. His other defeats aren't the easiest to get info on but they were supposedly mostly close decisions and always to other world class fighters like Kobayashi, Derado and Chionoi, where Robertson lost more regularly to the type of fighter Seki generally beat.

In the right era, especially one of the watered down, splinter weight/strap ones, he's the type of fighter who I could imagine being a multiple weight or long reigning titleist.

 

I suspect that the Ramos fight ruined him and took quite a bit from Ramos too. Like you say it was a war. Robertson got panned over those first 8 rounds but was like bell metal, very strong and in brilliant condition. A wirey sort of look to him but rippled with muscle and used to doing the rounds where Ramos was visibly struggling with weight draining by this point. Robertson looks like a smaller, stiffer, less skilled version of Tiger in a crude sense.

 

you could put him above robertson, but other than the kingpetch fight that was really close all other title fights, while not one sided, were decisive.
I also don't rate a win over an 18 year old chionoi as that impressive (even though he himself was only 19)
he did have many more fights at the top level than robertson so ranking him higher makes sense but not much higher

 

The Winstone fight wasn't decisive at all, the cuts stoppage was downright dubious iirc and Seki was giving Winstone a lot of trouble. It's more that Robertson fought far fewer world class fighters and lost to lesser fighters than Seki himself imo, plus Seki just looks like the better, more capable fighter on film to my eye. The Asian/Orient title and scene was tougher imo than the Commonwealth at that time. Agree to disagree I suppose mate

 

When I saw the title I read it as "Floyd Patterson"

 

just re watched his first fight with saldivar, he actually put up a much better fight than i remembered and did look really impressive
gonna have to rewatch the winstone fight some time (it's been a while) because i didn't remember him doing too well in that fight but i could be misremembering like i did the saldivar fight
either way i'll have to take the L on this one, i did probably underrate him

 

I'll probably rewatch the Winstone fight and find the same thing, haha. It's been quite a long time since I last saw it to be honest.

 

He claimed to have been drugged against Saldivar if memory serves.