[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5-GOGennVc[/ame] What skills do you see here that foreshadow his becoming a great fighter? Have you ever seen an amateur fighter display skills like this before? Those combinations he delivers are vicious! :scaredas That last right hand
bman, I as a tyke along with my dad and uncle went to a Golden Gloves card in NY. In one of the Salem Crescent corners helping out was a new sensational lightweight champion of the previous year called Ray Robinson who was ALREADY called a COMING pro champion by the sports scribes before he even started his pro career...He was so highly regarded as a coming super-star that he already had celebrity status...I recall I and my dad and uncle waiting in a small line to just shake his hand when the final bout was over...Later on we saw Robinson as a welterweight phenom in MSG several times, and to come full circle I saw the retired Robinson at the Concord Hotel where we both were waiting for our car keys...I tapped him on the shoulder and shook his hand about 1 year after his retirement... Ray looked and acted like he was royalty, and in my eyes was easily the greatest fighter I ever saw ringside...
Honestly haven't seen enough amateur boxing to really say, although this footage is very clean and a good testament to the 85-0 (69) record he put together as an amateur. I imagine he'd do damage against several great lightweights H2H considering he went 21-0 (18 ) against them as a pro, most notably beating Sammy Angott when he was the No. 1 lightweight in the world, five months before he defeated Lew Jenkins.
awesome stories bb. He had something special for sure. you can see from these videos already. I think he once got in trouble because it was suspected that he was secretly a prop fighting amateurs. he was already that good. There is only 1 sugar ray...
Sugar actually lost a decision to billy graham and another fighter so he was 85-2. (sometime he fought under the name walker smith.) But its true, this is an amateur and he looks better than some pros to be sure.
I don't think he was massively skilled, other than as a puncher he could get position his feet and body to get maximum leverage and he did it incredibly quick due to his great athleticism. He also had immense dimensions with his range as a lightweight
b,whatever unique talent Ray Robinson had he was in a class of his own as a Welterweight. Ray Robinson was to boxing, what Fred Astaire was in dancing and Enrico Caruso was in tenors...One of a kind...
Indeed. It would be interesting to see if SRR will be eclipsed... SS, It would be quite normal to assume Sugar was a pro the way he outboxed pep so easily i guess...Ray did say after the fight though that pep too was something special.
not that it matters anyway. two losses were nothing. his record was phenomenal with those two losses. how many others are 85-2 against the guys he went up against? he fought some tough opposition right from the beginning.