Someone explain why Ray Leonard is ranked so highly?

http://youtu.be/aDap3cXiRYA

Ray dropping Danny Bonaduce..

 

Three outta four ain't bad!

 

Leonard is great.
beat benetiez = big win (although he was over the hill)
Lost to duran but won 2 rematches (when over the hill)
beat tommy the first time (best fight/win of his career and probably the only prime great he ever beat) but lost the rematch
lost to hagler (no shame there, he put up a good fight)

He isn't THE greatest but he is great. He'd beat most guys from other eras. You have to remember hagler was a middle weight not welter, so it shouldn't even be used against him. Prime Leonard probably beats anyone in the last 20 years except maybe 2-3 guys (pacman, floyd and whitaker)

 

Benitez was prime (had beaten Palomino and Weston, and would go on to defeat Duran and win a belt at 154lbs).

 

Leonard didnt lose to Tommy or Hagler..(technically). And theres no way in hell Ray ever loses to Pac or Pea, and especially not Floyd!..Not ever:-(

 

No, but when Marvelous choked, Ray made it 4 for 4!

 

He beat 3 ATG's...maybe 4.

Not a long career...but good enough to excel in any era.

 

being a media darling helped

 

I rank Leonard in my top five, now I will admit I haven't studied a large amount of footage from certain fighters from before the 1960's such as Willie Pep or Henry Armstrong so I can't put them in my top ten P4P.

I feel Leonard is his prime was as talented as anyone and not only that he was great. He had incredible speed and power to go along with it and not only that a great killer instinct. He had very good stamina, a good chin and was very tough. Also he was as exciting as any fighter to watch in the ring.

Incredible performances in fights against great fighters such as Hagler, Hearns, Duran and Benitez. In fact he is the only fighter to gain a victory over the other three members of the fab 4 who I consider all of them to be amongst the greats all time. Even in defeat to Duran which was his only loss in his prime he fought like a champion and it was a very close fight but what made him great was how he came back and boxed the pants off Duran in the rematch causing Duran to quit. His comeback in the fight with Tommy Hearns was epic, Hearns was certainly one of the best welterweights of all time and was having the performance of his life against Leonard but Leonard still was able to show how great he was a dig deep enough to stop Hearns late. Then Finally the comeback after only having 1 fight in five years and to defeat arguably the greatest middleweight champion of all time in Marvin Hagler in what was a great fight IMO solidifies Leonard as one of the best of all time. Not to mention to go along with his victories over great fighters he beat many good fighters coming up and continued beating other good fighters while being champion. I ask how someone can not have Leonard ranked in their top 10.

 

If you back up the camera-friendly smiles and 7-UP commercials in the ring, who cares?

 

Benitez, Duran, Hearns and Hagler. This last Ray was past his prime, coming off a 2 year layoff and fighting way above his natural weight. Hagler's guy many rate as GOAT at Middle (I don't, but he's close), and SRL, fighting with those disadvantages, to my mind showed that he was in a different class altogether.
Agree about the lack of fights, but a detached retina would have put most guys out of the game permanently.
For me, he may well have been top 10.

 

its hard to sell me on a guy with a 36-3-1 record (more like 35-5)

did he really have it all?

no, he couldnt deal with speed which is why he was blown out by Norris which by the way, no one here cares to mention

speed was always a problem for leonard which is why he needed to take those five yrs off of Hagler's prime and only THEN continued (he was cleared to fight in 1982)

so let's not say "he had his career cut short". he cut his own career short to avoid getting KO'D

his chin was also a problem. I felt embarassed for him in the Geraldo fight. then there was the Howard fight. any fighter who gets floored by another fighter half his size with a 20-4 record does not go near the top 10,20, or 30

and Duran? let's not forget Duran was already nearing 30 and jumped two weight classes and still beat the bigger man he wasnt supposed to beat

and the Norris fight? some say he lost due to age but Floyd is 38 and still winning. THis means FLoyd is levels higher than Sugar becuz he can still handle the competition and Leonard couldnt (in reality Ray could never handle speed & movement)

I believe the real reason Ray went on vacation is becuz he couldnt handle fighters like Hagler or Pryor in their primes and only came back to get sloppy seconds

the record shows this. he predictably passed over the marquee contenders like Kalambay, Tate, and Nunn for the clumsy, uncoordinated, and poorly trained Lalonde, all the while he was SUPPOSSED to be retired

so who can we rank Ray leonard over? Gene Tunney? Rocky Marciano? Carlos Monzon? Archie Moore? Alexis Arguello?

no, their records are far superior to his. as are their boxing IQs

could Ray have pulled off what Jack Johnson did, pressuring the white heavyweight champion of the time until he gave in to a title match?

No, Ray Leonard does not have this level of inner strength and would wilt under the white man's opression faster than u can say "Terry Norris"


so being that he lacked the chin, the record, ducked so many fighters, lost terribly when pitted against younger faster fighters such as Terry Norris who turned out to be the total package, we cannot say with a straight face that Ray is top 30. we CAN say "Ray was the total package" and hope for the best

give Ray some impressive wins like Pryor (whom he also ducked) and red hot Don Curry, throw in a Micheal Nunn, and only then is he ready for serious consideration

 

and yet with no layoff and fighting at his more familiar weight of 154, cant win a round from Terry Norris

 

Rating him among the top ten greatest fighters in history does seem a little absurd, but it really isn't any less absurd than rating Duran among that top ten. Even worse when Ali and Louis are rated that high.

I mean, I'd usually point out the absurdity of this theory with regards to him fighting Hagler, but certainly not Hearns. The Barkley fight was one thing, but he looked a pale shadow of himself in the Kinchen fight, and I don't recall Leonard ever expressing any interest in a rematch prior to those two fights.

 

It's kinda difficult to justify Hagler as the greatest middleweight in history. Even if you leave out the fact that he lost to a washed up, one-eyed, coke-addicted welterweight, he benefited a great deal from an exceptionally mediocre era of limited, one-dimensional middleweight brawlers.