Breaking down Joe Louis

[McGrain]

You're definitely welcome. It's been a huge task but a labour of love for sure. I'll probably never write about Louis this directly again so i'm definitely going to cover as many details as I can.

[michaelquinlan]

Whenever I see those Louis movies, what impresses me the most is how short and compact his punches could be with still devastating effects. Some of the knock out blows are sometimes not much more than 12 to 18 inches. It’s just amazing. I can’t think of having seen that from any other fighter.
Great stuff, McGrain. Thank you very much!

piston hands!

[McGrain]

Part VI - Putting It All Together.

http://www.boxing.com/how_to_box_by_..._together.html

Much has been said concerning the Joe Louis duels with Max Schmeling. It was proof that Louis was vulnerable to right hands. It was proof that Louis wasn’t vulnerable to right hands. It was a victory for America over the Nazis. But Schmeling wasn’t a Nazi. It was boxing’s biggest fight. But it wasn’t about boxing. It was what made Louis a hero. But he was already a hero.

One of Abraham Lincoln’s most successful biographers, Roy Basler, wrote that “to know the truth of history is to realize its ultimate myth and its inevitable ambiguity.” Is there a more telling example of this truth in sports than Louis-Schmeling II? Sometimes the tale can obscure the truth. To put it another way: when was the last time you just wondered at it? Wondered at what Joe Louis did to Max Schmeling on a night when, admittedly, the world was on the brink of war and the African American was on the road to reclaiming himself from the white power structure in the USA? When, yes, the black and white citizens of that wounded country called out with one single voice for perhaps the first time and the man they were calling to was a fighter. When was the last time you ignored all those very important things and just marveled at that fight, the recording of which reporter Henry McLemore called “the most faithful recording ever made of human savagery”?

I’m going to invite you here, please, to wonder at it again.

In one moment.

First, we have to take a look at Joe’s best performance.