Ahead of his fight against Yordenis Ugas this weekend, Robinson admitted he felt an extra strain simply due to carrying such a famous boxing name.
“Carrying Sugar Ray’s name is obviously a pleasure. Growing up, I had a lot of pressure on myself with my name being Ray Robinson,” he said.
“Sometimes I think I even lost fights because I put too much pressure on myself having that name. So now, I make sure I don’t put too much pressure on myself.
“This is the type of fight that I roll out of bed for. You get tired of fighting regular guys. I’m an old school fighter – I love fighting guys that look good on paper and nobody knows who’s going to win and it’s up to his camp and my camp. I haven’t been this excited for a fight in a long time.”
On facing Ugas, Robinson added: “I expect hell. That’s how I’ve been preparing. If it’s anything less than that, he’ll be sorry. That’s how I’ve been training – like we’re fighting for a world title.
“I’m going to bring all the hardship I’ve had in my life into this fight on Saturday night.
“I’m an old school fighter. I’ll fight people in their grandma’s back yard if I have to. It doesn’t matter who I’m fighting. I’ll just do it Kimbo Slice-style.
“Once we conquer Saturday, we are supposed to fight Errol Spence and even if that doesn’t happen, we’re looking for a world title. Errol Spence, (Keith) Thurman, I’m ready to rock.
“Every time we put the gloves on, we want to do something special. Especially with this fight being on SHOWTIME, we just made sure we prepared the right way.
“But it doesn’t matter if it’s on TV or not, we still have to put on a good fight.”
