Robinson and Leonard.

Many consider Sugar Ray Leonard the GOAT and many say the same about Leonard.

Who in you're opinion faced the better opposition.

Robinson:
La Motta - ATG
Gavalan - ATG
Bassilio - ATG
Fulmer- -ATG

Leonard:
Hearns - ATG
Haglar - ATG
Duran - ATG
Benitez - ATG

Robbo faced more than that.

But personally I cant split. SRL for me is the best I have ever seen. Not enough footage exists of SRR at WW (his best weight) to say for sure who is better. All we can do is go by the words of people who have seen them both. Most say SRR was the best.

If you look at it like that - Leonard.

However - if you look at the rest of Robinson's opposition - Sammy Angott, Fritzie Zivic, Henry Armstrong, Randy Turpin, Graziano, Olson - then Walker Smith Jr's hand gains some strength.

Lamotta an alltime great????? Fullmer an alltime great???

Certainly middleweight champions to respect......

Oxy is right his record is littered with quality..

Robbo deserves to be greater by a shade but I think Leonard beats him....

For someone that couldn't figure Turpin out i think Leonard gives him nightmares......

Whoever leads loses........and I think it would be Robbo..

Angot, Armstrong and Zivic are all ATGS but at the time they met Robinson they were not the same force they were before.

I think Leonards quartet of top victories is superior to Robinsons top 4, and very impressive for a career of less than 40 fights. But the sheer breadth of opposition that Robinson fought also has to be considered aswell as the number of top level fights he had in comparison with Leonard.

Gavilan is in my opinion the best win either fighter has, his win over Armstrong gets dismissed for some reason, not at his best but he was still amongst the three best Welterweights in the world at the time. Their records are remotely comparable because you end comparing four names to a whole career of non stop quality, sounds harsh on Leonard but he has four top class names but very little else.

One can argue that SRL's ATGs are ranked higher than SRR's. Gavilan v Hearns? I'd pick Hearns anyday and twice on sundays.

Don't forget Robinson also beat the welterweight version of the 'Black Murderer's Row.' Jackie Wilson, George 'Sugar' Costner and Tommy Bell.

Wilson was considered by many as the best welterweight in the world(even better than Ray) when they first met. Many old time Philly experts say that when Ray crushed Costner in 1950 that it was Ray's greatest fight. Costner would beat Ike Williams, Kid Gavilan, and Gene Burton that same year. And Bell was a feared contender when Ray topped him twice in the mid-forties.

Their best wins are comparable, but overall Robinson. And by a mile.

Good point

I can never understand why some rate Hearns so much higher than Gavilan, it is of course personal opinion but both ring magazine and the IBRO both rate the Kid a fair bit higher than Hearns both at welterweight and even pound for pound.

I've been trying to big up Robinsons win over California Jackie for months now but to apparently no avail, at least one person seems to have taken it on board.

Well it's hardly a shocking relevation that if we were to take their top four wins and absolutely nothing else as a way of measuring a fighter's greatness, then Leonard would very possibly be the greatest of the lot. Benitez, Duran, Hearns and Hagler, all more or less in their primes, all world champions at the time that Leonard beat them, and all in or around their best weight class. Fantastic stuff.

The problem is balancing how important that is in relation to the depth of a fighter's record. Take away Leonard's four best wins there, and what do we have? Kalule, a good but hardly great Light-Middleweight against whom Leonard didn't look terribly good before forcing a stoppage, Green, of a similar but in all likelihood lesser standard than Kalule, and finally Muniz, whose most notable claim to fame were two losing efforts (albeit excellent losing efforts in genuine 'Fight of the Year' contenders) against Palomino.

On the other hand, take out Robinson's four best wins (for argument's sake, let's take them as Gavilan, Fullmer, Basilio and Angott) and you still have Armstrong (granted, not at his sparking best by then), La Motta, Wilson, Olson, Costner, Turpin, Graziano, Bell, Zivic and so on.

Take out Armstrong's best four wins of Ross, Ambers, Angott and Zivic, and you can still muse over Arizmendi, Jenkins, Davis, Larkin, Bass, Sarron, Belloise, Montanez, Day, Garcia etc.

The same method applies to a few others, and on and on we could go.

I actually think (though I personally wouldn't) that there's a claim to rank Ray Leonard as high as fifth or sixth in the all time pound for pound scheme of things, but the bottom line is that, no matter how you look at it, he isn't a contender to dethrone the original Sugar Ray.

Leonard, so hard to rate as his prime was so short, I'm not sure anyone will match the quality he faced in his first 7 title fights, but then he retired and despite the hagler swansong was never the same thereafter. You have to rank robbo higher, and rightly so, but in a prime for prime head to head, it's a tough call