BoxRec

Definitely an underrated fighter. Could do it all in there. Could box and bang, great jab, excellent right hand, beautiful technique, busy to the body, excellent movement and could really use his legs and a rock solid chin. Fought with so many other top fighters from top contenders, ex-champions, future champions, up & comers, hall of famers etc; Really a fearless fighter who'd not care about facing feared guys at middleweight and often school them.

He was very unfortunate not to have gotten at least two of the decisions against Emile Griffith. I personally felt he should have been 3-1 or even 4-0 up in the series and not the 1-3 that caused history to underrate him somewhat. Years after his career I believe it was in The Ring magazine where three experts were polled (Hank Kaplan, Angelo Dundee and Emile Griffith) on who they thought would win between Rodriguez and another Cuban great Jose Napoles and all three picked Rodriguez. I think that shows just how highly he was regarded. He'd have been a handful for just about anybody in welterweight history.

I'd love to hear any insight from folks here who may have seen him live and also if anybody had the pleasure of seeing his fights with Briscoe, Carter, Akins, Logart, Cokes and Benton.

Totally agree. I think he's more than just somewhat overlooked, though. I rate him ahead of Griffith and within my top 50 all time greats. I scored all 4 of their fights for Rodriguez. That said, they were all close, difficult fights to score and I can certainly understand differing opinions.

I'd love to see the Cokes fights myself. Rodriguez didn't seem like his style had a foil, but apparently Cokes was that guy. Damn fine fighter, but I wouldn't put him in the Napoles/Griffith/Rodriguez class. Would be very interesting to see how those ones played out.

Yeah I’d love to see those Cokes fights too. I’ve really only heard that the first was very close and Cokes got the decision in his hometown, the second Rodriguez dominated and the the third Rodriguez unfairly lost a point when it should have been scored a knockdown but ended up getting stopped which is surprising. Dundee did complain that the point deduction robbed them of the fight. I’ve heard Cokes say he dominated the first fight.

Yeah, Cokes was brilliant. A very well rounded fighter but still you’d expect Rodriguez would be too much especially over a series.

I agree with your 4-0 in Rodriguez’ favor and ironically the closest fight that I felt could go Emile’s way was the win for Luis in fight II.

He is that fighter that with just a little change of fate he’d see his stock rise so high. He showed quality in all his fights and nobody dominated him. It’s just a shame he never had a huge fan base or essentially home crowd and his title reign was unfairly short. Score those Griffith fights the way they should have gone and he’d be far more known and then another moment he possibly cost himself was when he fought Benvenuti. He should have listened to Dundee and he’d have left Rome as the Middleweight champion which would have pushed him up the all-time rankings even further.

He jabbed Briscoes head off. Wasnt even close on my card. Made Briscoe look like he had cement shoes on.

It's truly impressive that he managed to go 5-0 against the middleweight trio of Benton, Briscoe and Carter and from what reports say all in pretty dominant fashion pretty much in their own backyards for the most part. There was a knockdown against Carter but Carter even said he knew Rodriguez wasn't hurt.

Imagine the credit we'd be lavishing on a current welterweight, say Spence going up and going 5-0 against Jacobs, Charlo and Saunders? First of all he wouldn't - he'd likely go 0-5 and none of those guys are as good as the trio Rodriguez fought.

Chris, here is my take on Griffith-Rodriguez III and IV

Griffith - Rodriguez III - scored on NYs rounds basis

Round 1: Rodriguez
Round 2: Griffith
Round 3: Griffith
Round 4: Even
Round 5: Rodriguez
Round 6: Rodriguez
Round 7: Rodriguez
Round 8: Rodriguez
Round 9: Rodriguez
Round 10: Rodriguez
Round 11: Griffith
Round 12: Even
Round 13: Even
Round 14: Rodriguez
Round 15: Even

Total: 8-3-4 Rodriguez

Hate to have 4 even rounds, but they played it tight on the inside. Like their 4th fight, Rodriguez was simply the busier and I just don't know if they were ignoring Rodriguez' body work, because I didn't. Official scores were 8-7 and 9-6 for Griffith and 10-5 for Rodriguez. Incidentally, the AP and UPI both scored it 8-6-1 for Rodriguez.



Emile Griffith and Luis Rodriguez IV

Excellent fight until the latter rounds when clinches became more frequent, but did not detract from the fight for me. I will totally admit that my score is wayyy off from the official and unofficial scorecards. 5 point must system employed in Las Vegas, here ya go.

Round 1: 5-4 EG
Round 2: 5-4 LR
Round 3: 4-4 Even (I had Rodriguez winning this one but 1 point was deducted for a low blow)
Round 4: 5-4 LR
Round 5: 5-4 LR
Round 6: 5-4 LR
Round 7: 5-4 LR
Round 8: 5-4 LR
Round 9: 5-4 LR
Round 10: 5-5 Even
Round 11: 5-4 LR
Round 12: 5-4 EG
Round 13: 5-5 Even
Round 14: 5-4 EG
Round 15: 5-4 LR

I had it 71-65 for Rodriguez. I cannot come up with any way possible of favoring Griffith in this one. For me, Rodriguez is simply the busier fighter. I think his body work was really ignored in this one as well as their third fight. Perhaps the key is when Dunphy mentions Griffith was catching a lot on his arms. i don't know. Maybe at ringside it looked different, but on youtube, even allowing for Griffith catching blows, Rodriguez was still the busier fighter. And as the fight wore on Griffith's body language told a tale. One could see him shifting and grimacing when Rodriguez was going to the body. These blows were getting through and telling. I'm always confident in my scoring, but I will admit that I'm obviously at odds with what was written.

chrisjs1985 wrote: ↑11 Oct 2018, 10:30 It's truly impressive that he managed to go 5-0 against the middleweight trio of Benton, Briscoe and Carter and from what reports say all in pretty dominant fashion pretty much in their own backyards for the most part. There was a knockdown against Carter but Carter even said he knew Rodriguez wasn't hurt.

Imagine the credit we'd be lavishing on a current welterweight, say Spence going up and going 5-0 against Jacobs, Charlo and Saunders? First of all he wouldn't - he'd likely go 0-5 and none of those guys are as good as the trio Rodriguez fought.

Its really even more impressive than that. He was a natural welterweight who regularly fought middleweights and it was twelve years into his career before he lost to one. That was future LHW champion Vicente Rondon who stood about 6'2" or 6'3" and outweighed Rondon by over seven pounds (in fact Rondon didn't make the MW limit). Rodriguez avenged that loss six weeks later. Before officially moving up to MW Rodriguez beat Yama Bahama, Joey Giambra, Denny Moyer, Skeeter McClure, Holly Mims, Rocky Rivero, Jimmy Lester, Ferd Hernandez, among many other middleweights. Prior his loss to Jose Gonzalez in 1970 when Rodriguez was 33 years old he had only ever been beaten by past, current, or future champions. His loss to Gonzalez was controversial as it took place in Gonzalez back yard and Gonzalez was allowed to fight over the stipulated limit. Rodriguez had already knocked out Gonzalez nearly 10 years earlier when both were in their primes and would defeat him again two months after his controversial loss. Rodriguez was a very special fighter. Smart, tough, always in condition, and very busy. Difficult guy to beat.

klompton wrote: ↑11 Oct 2018, 14:59

chrisjs1985 wrote: ↑11 Oct 2018, 10:30 It's truly impressive that he managed to go 5-0 against the middleweight trio of Benton, Briscoe and Carter and from what reports say all in pretty dominant fashion pretty much in their own backyards for the most part. There was a knockdown against Carter but Carter even said he knew Rodriguez wasn't hurt.

Imagine the credit we'd be lavishing on a current welterweight, say Spence going up and going 5-0 against Jacobs, Charlo and Saunders? First of all he wouldn't - he'd likely go 0-5 and none of those guys are as good as the trio Rodriguez fought.

Its really even more impressive than that. He was a natural welterweight who regularly fought middleweights and it was twelve years into his career before he lost to one. That was future LHW champion Vicente Rondon who stood about 6'2" or 6'3" and outweighed Rondon by over seven pounds (in fact Rondon didn't make the MW limit). Rodriguez avenged that loss six weeks later. Before officially moving up to MW Rodriguez beat Yama Bahama, Joey Giambra, Denny Moyer, Skeeter McClure, Holly Mims, Rocky Rivero, Jimmy Lester, Ferd Hernandez, among many other middleweights. Prior his loss to Jose Gonzalez in 1970 when Rodriguez was 33 years old he had only ever been beaten by past, current, or future champions. His loss to Gonzalez was controversial as it took place in Gonzalez back yard and Gonzalez was allowed to fight over the stipulated limit. Rodriguez had already knocked out Gonzalez nearly 10 years earlier when both were in their primes and would defeat him again two months after his controversial loss. Rodriguez was a very special fighter. Smart, tough, always in condition, and very busy. Difficult guy to beat.

The oldest fight I've seen of his is the Benvenuti one where he's clearly not as great as he once was but really only lost due to walking into a perfect punch. Up until his loss in England where he's said to have looked rather sluggish and frankly, old he had defeated everyone he ever fought with the exception of Nino. Quite an achievement given that many of the fights were in the opponents backyards and outweighed a lot of the time.

Every other fight I saw of his I judge him to have won and looked excellent each time. Tremendous consistency. Just going through his record it's really something special. The list of top fighters he defeated ranging from current, former, future champions to still serviceable veterans, young up & coming fighters, perennial contenders, top 10 contenders (according to IBHOF register) etc is huge;

Benny "Kid" Paret (two wins)
Charley Scott
Kid Fichique
Joe Miceli
Cecil Shorts
Virgil Akins (two wins)
Rudell Stitch
Isaac Logart
Garnett Hart
Carl Hubbard
Chico Vejar
Yama Bahama (two wins)
Johnny Gonsalves (two wins)
Curtis Cokes
Emile Griffith
Jose Gonzalez
Federico Thompson
Ricardo Falech
Gene Armstrong
Joey Giambra
Holley Mims
Denny Moyer
Wilbert McClure (two wins)
Jesse Smith
L.C Morgan
Rubin Carter (two wins)
George Benton
Bennie Briscoe (two wins)
Manuel Alvarez
Percy Manning
Rocky Rivero
Jimmy Lester
Ferd Hernandez
Vicente Rondon
Joe Shaw
Rafael Gutierrez
Tom Bethea
Willie Warren
Fraser Scott
Tony Mundine
Davey Hilton

So roughly 41 fighters of good or excellent quality for 48 wins. Maybe I am missing 3 or 4 too.