Pound for Pound: A Biography of Sugar Ray Robinson by Herb Boyd

Pound for Pound: A Biography of Sugar Ray Robinson Reviews

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  SheAintGotNoShoes

  I found this book to be rather balanced and fair. The author does not shy away from the fact that in his opinion SRR was the pound for pound best fighter ever, while leaving that verdict open to other people's interpretations.
  
  He praised all his good points, his rise from Black Bottom to pink cadillacs in Harlem, but does not avoid telling about his relentless domestic violence towards his first wife, breaking the arm of his second wife, not taking care of his first son and being a very distance and unavailable father to his second. Also sufficiently described and a source of never ending frustration ( though she sucked it up and stayed married to him for 20 years nonetheless ) was his relentless ' tom catting ' around, with practically anything in a skirt.
  
  If you like biographies, perhaps this will be for you.
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  Lumumba Mthembu

  Sugar Ray Robinson died from hardened arteries, hypertension, diabetes and alzheimers. Usually, just 1 of those is enough to kill off mere mortals. It is a testament to his toughness that it took 4 dread diseases to finish him.
  
  My praise for him ends there. He was an abusive man who solved problems with his fists. Muhammad Ali should have given him a taste of his own medicine when Sugar interfered in a domestic dispute the heavyweight was having with his wife, but a threat was enough to scare off Robinson.
  
  Off I go to watch an HBO doccie to see whether Sugar was the 🐐 like they say he is.
• 
  Jamar

  A great book for any boxing or Harlem Renaissance fan. Often seen and acclaimed as THE best boxer of all-time and one of the best businessmen of Harlem, this book will give you a detailed look at Ray Robinson's life. And it showed me that a man with such great looks, personality, and a man who at times made victory look so effortlessly, can have many faults and struggles as well. A great novel to humble any champ!
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  Boy Blue

  Sugar Ray Robinson is such a fascinating character, so charismatic and glowing that anything written about him would be interesting. Unfortunately, this book has tried to get Sugar's naturally fascinating life to do all the work. Someone else commented that this reads like a 300 page Wikipedia entry and I feel that probably isn't far off the mark.
  
  A mjor problem with the book is that though it mentions the difference between Sugar the boxer, Sugar the public icon, and Sugar the man at home it really makes no attempt to reconcile these personas. Apart from the occasional throwaway comment Boyd does no analysis on the real motivations or the reasons Sugar ended up the way he did.
  
  There's a prescient moment when Sugar laments the fall of Joe Louis after the Brown Bomber gets easily beaten in his final fight after coming out of retirement because of his dire financial situation. Sugar states he never wants to end up like that and Boyd says this was oddly prophetic but then it isn't revisited when Sugar goes on to do extend his career way longer than Louis and ultimately ruin his career more than Louis ever did. The tears Sugar cried for Louis aren't there when Sugar himself is at his lowest.
  
  It seems Sugar lived entirely in the moment and while there were many around him who could see this none of them were able to convince him of the benefits of financial prudence or they actively undermined the few successful business endeavours he did create. There's also this feeling that he was playing the role he felt people wanted him to play, the star of Harlem, the one who made it, the pink cadillac, the pomped hair.
  
  In many ways the story of Sugar is a cautionary tale to the sports stars of today. It's still the case that hundreds of professional athletes in America end up destitute and broke because of their inability to manage money and the luxurious lifestyles they get caught in and can't seem to live without, think Iverson playing in China etc. There's also a story in the way people hang on to famous and succesful people and ultimately drag them down.
  
  Another issue with the book is that the actual boxing, the fights and the training, are not well done. Boyd seems to have an inability to get in there and find what makes Sugar the champ, what makes him pound for pound the greatest fighter of all time.
  
  I also found Ray Robinson II's contributions almost meaningless. He was actually there for a lot of this but all of his potential insight is reduced to throwaway comments about his childish thoughts and feelings at the time.
  
  Edna Mae comes out of the book as a completely misunderstood and undervalued component of Sugar's life and success. Unfortunately, the domestic violence throughout the book isn't really addressed. It's reported as factual but there's no attempt to understand why it's happening or what could have been done to prevent it. I think that is the biggest problem with the book. We come to it wanting to read about the great boxing champion and we leave thinking yes he was a great fighter but a terrible man. But we don't get any look at why he was that way.
  
  In The Cost Of These Dreams, Wright Thompson talks about how all the things that made Michael Jordan the greatest basketballer of all time are all the things that hold him back from integrating into society as a normal person. I feel this sort of analysis could have been directed at Sugar Ray Robinson. An absolute master in the ring but completely inept in normal life. I remember him as the greatest pound for pound fighter of all time, an absolute icon both of his time and now, but also as a flawed human being. A personality with just a few cracks that were widened over time by a cruel society that ultimately broke him down and left him for dead.
• 
  Bart

  Pound for Pound is a good book about an exceptional athlete who was also a decent man. Whatever else it is, it is a reminder of what a brutal craft prizefighting was and always will be.
  
  As a writer Herb Boyd is about average. There are times when he is out of his depth in writing about boxing - he makes a bizarre early reference to how many more amateur fights Robinson had (69) than contemporary fighters (Floyd Mayweather, as a timely example, had more than 220) - and there are times when he's reduced to campy intrusion, such as letting us know, apropos of nothing, that milkshakes at a neighborhood drug store were "delicious." Too, Boyd - described as a noted activist, journalist, author and teacher - is much more of a Robinson fan than a boxing writer or a biographer.
  
  Pound for Pound is not exhaustive or particularly critical, and at times it feels like the author is trying too hard to cover up Robinson's misdeeds. Probably the origin of this is contained in the book's title.
  
  See, "pound for pound" is a ranking system that was invented for Robinson's benefit. As a welterweight champ, Robinson couldn't hope to knock out a heavyweight like Joe Luis, but "pound for pound", the argument goes, Robinson was the better and harder punching prizefighter.
  
  That brings us to Muhammad Ali. Ali was fond of calling himself "The Greatest" even though Ali himself knew that Robinson was greater. But in the immaturity and widespread hagiography of the 1960s and 70s, Ali became something of a cultural icon. As a half-naked pugilist he became, to some, a philosopher and civil rights icon.
  
  In Pound for Pound Boyd is endeavoring to argue that Robinson was the greatest fighter of all time - which he was. Trouble is, in the residue of the 70s, Boyd feels compelled to prove Robinson was also a great person, else how could he be compared with Ali?
  
  Really, Robinson fit very few definitions of "great" outside the ring. That's fine; Ali fit even fewer (including his own professed definitions). But it will take another three decades and a cultural overhaul before the truth of what roles athletes played (or didn't play) in social change (or social stasis) is clarified.
  
  In the meantime, Pound for Pound is a good introduction to Robinson. And it's particularly appropriate for any young boxing fan who's mistakenly believed Floyd Mayweather's recent assertions that he's somehow greater than Robinson was.
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  Tyler

  The life of the best boxer in the history of the sport. The focus is more on his life, his relationship w/ his wife, and living in Harlem in the late 40s and early 50s. Its good, but im more interested in his fights.
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  Ward

  OK but a little superficial. A chronological account without a whole lot of insight. I'm sure he was more interesting than this.
  
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  Wayne

  Basically a 300 page Wikipedia entry
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  DJ Meunier

  In depth look into SRR's life inside and outside of the ring. A valuable read for any boxing or fight aficionado.
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  Dayla

  Pound for pound no one beat Sugar Ray Robinson. Yes that is what they said, and it was true. Sugar Ray died on my birthday April 12, 1989. Joe Louis died on my birthday April 12, 1981. No wonder I always felt connected to boxers.
  
  Great book about his life.
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  Brooklyn Sr

  3.5 stars
  Great book for boxing fans. Learn more about Sugar Ray
  The best there ever was
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  Lala Hulse

  If you don't like boxing at all, this sure is the boxing book for you! I actually couldn't finish it - I had to put it down when the author said that Robinson "kayoed" his opponent. That's fine for a regular book, but KO is a term of art in boxing and it has a particular meaning. And spelling. Aside from the evident disinterest in actual boxing, I was left with more question about Sugar Ray than answers. If you're looking for African American history there are better books, and if you're looking for boxing history almost anything else would be better.