He's beaten some known MWs such as George Benton, Rubin Carter, and Bennie Briscoe but was KO'd by Nino Benvenuti when he fought for the MW title. Was Rodriguez as good as a MW and would he have been able to hold his own against other great MWs such as Carlos Monzon, Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Robinson, Mike McCallum, Bernard Hopkins, etc.?
He'd pretty clearly beat McCallum imo. He's beat by Monzon and Robinson, but gives an amazing account of himself. If he beat Marvin Hagler, I wouldn't be surprised but I'd favour MMH. He's probably too small for Hopkins.
Rodriguez beat so many good middleweights and often did it fairly easily. McClure, Moyer, Mims, Armstrong, Manning etc; he was already very long in the tooth when he met Benvenuti but still went on to blitz Mundine, split controversial fights with the bigger Rondon etc; he suffered from a lot of poor judging in his career. Often, Cuban fighters don’t find a home in America so are the visiting fighter often and get little breaks. I wonder if Rodriguez has settled in Mexico how much bigger he’d have been because everyone liked him on a personal level. He would beat McCallum quite handily I think. His movement would bother anyone but he could also fight his ass off and was busy as hell and had good variations in his attacks.
