Sugar Ray Robinson Analysis

https://youtu.be/jRPX7aks_Fw

First in a new series - worth subscribing to.

Great little video. I love studying the Graziano knockout in particular - staggering, not just because of the quality of the knockout shot, but also because of the artistry which leads to it.

Thanks for sharing.

I tried something similar once to "selling" a right hand after a couple of repetitions against a guy who was slower than me.

Didn't work. I think my footwork made it obvious and I got clipped with an almighty right that put me down. The artistry (excellent term to use when referring to SRR) comes down to his recollection of the distance, taking that into account, watching the movement of his opponent while ensuring his own footwork is counterbalancing theirs and then making split decisions to throw with venom at precisely the right time.

People underrate footwork. Anyone championing Froch should watch how ploddy and predictable his footwork is. Anyone who's good at reading movement (Groves, Ward, Taylor) will always give him problems because its easy to see what he's going to do and where he plans on moving to after throwing. Groves had an exceptional amount of success when Froch was attempting to come off a left hook because he was always open afterwards while marching forward with his right cocked.

This is why boxers like SRR should be emulated rather than ignored. Simple understanding of movement takes a boxer who has the tools, speed, power, agility, heart etc and makes them almost unbeatable. Take Mayweather for example - absolutely world class footwork. He is rarely if ever taken off balance because he does the "L" step that SRR did. If an opponent is looking to land the right and is getting within distance, he will do 1 of 3 things. Back up and make the distance impossible to work with, L step and throw them off balance or throw something cute to irritate the boxer coming inside.

I've watched some SRR recently and he really was the greatest. He pioneered "the sweet science" in my eyes.

It's a real shame that there's no footage of Robinson at his absolute best, the LaMotta and Graziano fights being the closest thing available. The problem with a lot of the footage is that it's against quite slow opponents, for as slow as Froch is he's nowhere near as plodding as Fullmer before that knockout.

I would love to see the second Gavilan fight which by all accounts was technical mastery by both just to see how good he really was. Robinson is the greatest, there is little chance of almost every Historian and worthwhile figurehead being wrong but from the fights we can see, does an ageing Middleweight Robinson look better than a peak Welterweight Leonard?

It's a two edged sword for me, on one hand I don't think he should have been losing to Basilio and Fullmer in the first but that at his age he was able to win the rematch says everything about his boxing brain.

As for the video, the left hands before that right against Graziano are just a blur, in real time you can barely see him throw the second because the right is instantly following up.

Hammersmith (or anyone else interested), a little while back some saint posted a video on YouTube which had some really rare finds, including some little-known footage of Robinson dating all the way back to one of his Lightweight fights against Angott (can't remember which one).

It's only snippets and in some cases the quality is a bit grainy to say the least, but still, I reckon most would take anything they can get of Robinson in his peak years. Can't remember what the video is called exactly - I'd suggest just searching Sugar Ray Robinson and then sorting the results by video length, as it's a little over two hours long. Should hopefully be able to find it from there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_BoTkithcU

Equally fascinating to see Angott try and deal with Robinson Chris, how anyone can tell me any current lightweight beats him is beyond me. Constantly moving, very light on his feet and the head movement is something you rarely see today, not exactly the face first brawlers that some would want us to believe. I see an awful lot of similarities between Angott and Hopkins, circle on the outside, leap in with a single shot and in the same movement grab hold and wrestle.

I can't imagine it's the best fight to highlight Robinsons skills, he lands very little against a bloody awkward opponent who was hard work for anyone. You can still see the speed and foot movement though.

There was a BBC documentary on him years back. "Reputations" or something. Sure there's early footage of him -- looks faster than a speeding bullet.

I admire Robinson as much as the next guy but its worth remembering that he eat a lot of leather against technically limited fighters such as Bassilio and La Motta. You have to wonder what a Hearns or SRL would have done to them.

I don't think either would have landed a glove on the Hitman and Sugar.