The legacy of Sugar Shane Mosely.

[RozzySean]

Yes I remember & in regards to ability Shane may belong alongside Duran, Leonard or Whitaker. But his record at 135 is good not legendary & not enough to get rated with them. He never went after Johnston to unify the title although I'm sure he would have been the favorite. His challenges weren't that impressive... Leija & Molina weren't prime when Mosley fought them. Overall IMO the guys I listed in a previous post had greater credentials at 135 than Mosley.

Why do you list Leonard when he never fought at 135? Why would he fight Johnson when he could move up and challenge ODLH for big money? Shane would have destroyed Stevie Johnson. There was no need to urgency to unify the belts because everybody knew Shane was clearly tops at 135 and the public was far more interested in Shane moving up in weight than fight in weak LW division. Not for nothing, but Duran's (who is one of my favorite fighters) fought lots of crap at 135. De Jesus and Buchanan were probably his two best opponents at 135. His crowning moment was beating Sugar Ray, and that came at WW.

Benny Leonard not Ray Leonard!

Becoming undisputed champion means more than just holding a belt. Duran, Leonard, Whitaker, Gans, Williams, Brown, Ortiz, Canzoneri, Ambers & Welsh were all world champions at 135, Shane was just a belt holder!!! How does interest in fighting Oscar effect Shane's all time ranking at 135? It doesn't! Becoming World champion would have helped.

Duran had 12 title defenses, 11 by KO & reigned for 6 years. Duran could do it all in the ring. He could make guys miss then he'd kill their body. He could cut of the ring on some of the best movers, he could switch between southpaw & orthodox seamlessly. Duran was born to fight!!!

I agree that Duran could do it all and I'm not saying that Shane is ahead of Duran. Keep in mind, that Duran won the belt before alphabet soup, so he didn't have the problem of having lesser guys out there than he needed to fight to be considered the real champ. He one the belt, then beat up on mostly mediocre fighters for 6 years.

It's also almost impossible to compare Shane to Benny Leonard. He was in such an earlier era. It's not even like Robinson, where we have a good amount of decent tape on him.

I just don't care that Shane didn't unify at 135. He had nothing to prove in that division at the time. He was head and shoulders above everyone else, and all the clamor was for him to fight Oscar. Whitaker has real opponents, decent beltholters to fight to make unifying worth it. Had there been another beltholder on the level of Azumah Nelson that Mosley ducked, fine, kill him for it, but I don't give a rat's ass that Shane skipped Stevie Johnson to move up to fight Oscar when the whole boxing world was asking for it.

At 135, Shane was a force of nature, and there is only a handful of fighters who could hang with him at that weight - Duran, Mayweather, Whitaker. Maybe old Benny Leonard had more longevity, but doubt he had more talent and skill than Shane.

It's like keeping Jim Rice out the baseball of fame because he didn't play long enough to pad his stats. If you are of a certain mindset, he doesn't deserve it because he comes up short in the stats game, but when you use your eyes and your brains, you know he belongs. Everybody new he was the most feared right handed bat in the league for 10 years. You can point to inflated numbers from longer careers, but I look at how dominate you were at the time and your overall skills, and Shane is CLEARLY at best a top 5 LW and no worse than top 10.