Boxing immortals in the form of 5-weight world champions, the legendary Sugar Ray Leonard and the recently retired Floyd Mayweather Jr were at loggerheads earlier this week on social media.
The back and forth occurred on Ray Leonard’s Instagram page. The all time great was directing a message at his old rival, ‘The Hit-man’ Thomas Hearns.
The sequence of messages was initiated by the 50-0 ‘Money’ Mayweather when he brought attention to the significance of their nicknames. Mayweather began by messaging “You Sugar and I’m TBE.”
‘Sugar Ray’ offered his retort to the defensive genius by reminding Floyd of a conversation they had privately in the past. Ray said on that occasion, Mayweather paid tribute to him and said he was the best fighter he had ever seen.
Furthermore, in the same message Leonard insinuated Mayweather has now decided to change his mind because he is now retired.
Mayweather recently claimed he was happily retired and has no plans to return following claiming victory in an exhibition bout with UFC lightweight champion, Conor McGregor.
On the other hand, since announcing his retirement, Floyd has sought to make himself relevant in the public eye and this is just another in a long list of stunts.
Leonard concluded his message by wishing Floyd and his family a merry Christmas and a happy new year.
Mayweather then responded with yet another barb while trying to display superiority over the 1976 Olympic Gold Medalist. “You lost your first fight to a lightweight, which was Roberto Duran…TBE has never lost.”
Floyd then tried to further accentuate himself as the more prominent fighter, by adding “Rather a fighter was young or old, In his prime or past his prime … I beat them #NoExcuses.”
Mayweather also took aim at Leonard on another of his social media posts. This one a throwback photo to a promotional shot ahead of the Leonard – Hearns rematch in 1988.
Floyd was rude and disrespectful openly dismissed two all time greats of the sport as “easy work.”
Floyd was not done there however, boasting that he has broken many of the PPV related records in the sport’s rich history.
Ray finally feeling annoyed and frustrated by the ruffling of his feathers had the last word when he referred back to his fateful meeting with Floyd Mayweather Jr’s father, Floyd Mayweather Sr.
Ray said, “Floyd I beat your Dad who gave me trouble for a while but like father like son! KO!!! Sugar.”
It sure would have been something spectacular to have seen these two throw down in their respective primes. However, lets not forget Leonard was such a big, natural welterweight who was 5’10 and boasted a reach of 74 inches, superior to Floyd’s.
Don’t overlook how pivotal those dimensions would be in any hypothetical match-up.
Floyd has a masterful, shoulder roll defence just as his father had.
It gave Leonard problems for a few rounds, but eventually Leonard’s speed proved too much for the older Mayweather to time and he was eventually overwhelmed with a fusillade of blows.
Also take into account the great undefeated technical boxers that looked to minimise risk with Ray and box cautiously with him found themselves fatiguing as the fight came down the stretch. Case and point? Wilfred Benitez and Thomas Hearns.
Ray was a rare breed of fighter in the sense he could go up through the gears as a fight was being played out.
He was vicious and violent in those championship rounds and I think that famous late rampage Leonard always had in his locker would have been too much for Mayweather to cope with.
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