HiTech Creations, makers of the wildly popular World War 2 flight simulator Aces High, welcomes you back to our series that pays tribute to some of the great professional athletes who served during World War 2.
Today we would like to salute one of the best professional boxers to ever strap on a pair of boxing gloves, Sugar Ray Robinson.
Sugar Ray Robinson was born Walker Smith Jr, and in many boxing publications he is ranked as the greatest boxer, pound for pound, of all-time. He fought in the welterweight and middleweight divisions his entire career, and in 1990 he was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
As an amateur, Robinson had a record of 85-0 with 69 of those victories being by knockout. In 1940 he turned professional at the age of nineteen and from then to 1951 he had a professional record of 128-1-2 with 84 knockouts. At one time during that stretch he went ninety-one straight matches without a loss. He held the welterweight world title from 1946 to 1951, and he won the middleweight title in 1951 as well. He retired in 1952 only to come back and regain the middleweight title in 1955, and he regained that title again in 1958.
In 1943 Robinson was inducted into the United States Army under the name of Walker Smith. He was only in the service for fifteen months, and spent most of that time touring with Joe Lewis, performing boxing exhibitions for the troops. He was given an honorable discharge from the army on June 3, 1944, but his career was always tainted with false claims that he had deserted when in fact he had suffered an injury and because of that injury he failed to show up for shipment to Europe. Whatever the facts may truly be, there is no denying that the boxing exhibitions that he and Lewis performed greatly helped the morale of soldiers during that war, and there certainly is no denying that he was one of the greatest athletes ever to serve during that war.
We invite you to return next week for another installment of this series, and we also invite you, twice weekly, to read our series “This Day in World War 2,” to find out important events that happened on particular days.
Aces High offers a free two week download of our exciting flight sim game. We are sure that once you strap on your helmet and fly the skies with Aces High, you’ll never try another combat flight simulator.
