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All-Time Great
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Tacoma, Washington USA
Age: 45
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"How I Would Have Clobbered Clay" By Joe Louis
How I Would Have Clobbered Clay Part 1
By Joe Louis
Originally Printed In The February 1967 Issue Of The Ring Magazine
Reprinted In The February 1991 Issue Of The Ring Magazine
Cassius Clay's got lots of ability, but he's not The Greatest. He's a guy with a million dollars worth of confidence and a dime's worth of courage. I could have whipped him. In all honesty, I feel it in my bones. Clay can be clobbered, and if you'll pardon an old-timer talking, I am cerrtain I know how.
These days, I get to the fights in most parts of the world, especially when Clay is defending my old heavyweight title. We kid around in training camps a little, and Clay makes speeches and goes into his act, telling folks how he would have fought Joe Louis. I play along. It don't harm nobody. Maybe helps with the action, puts a few dollars on the take.
Fellows come up, asking for autographs, that kind of thing, and tell me I could have licked Clay with the Empire State Building tied to my feet. I don't say anything.
But a man gets thoughts sitting there watching Clay. I see him fooling in the gym, and I seen nearly all his fights, right through from Willie Besmanoff, way back in Louisville, to Cleveland Williams in Houston. Sometimes Clay fights good and sometimes he pulls rhubarbs that should get his head knocked off if the other guy knew his trade like they made me learn mine.
Trouble with Clay, he thinks he knows it all. Fights with his mouth. He won't listen. Me, first thing I learned in the fight gane was to keep my trap shut and my ears wide open, especially when my wise old trainer, Chappie Blackburn, was telling me things for my own good.
We did all right. Seems like I won a championship, so maybe I'm entitled to speak up a word or two of truth after all these years. And the truth in my book is I'm sure I could've put Clay away, and also know how.
Clay says he's got the fastest hands and the fastes feet of any heavyweight who was ever born. That's his opinion and he's entitled to it. The kid has speed and can surely box when he has to. There's nobody around to outbox him, and the opponent who tries is in his grave. Especially in the middle of the ring. With room to move, Clay's a champion, real dangerous. But he doesn't know a thing about fighting on the ropes, which is where he would be if he were in there with me. He's all confused, his feet in knots, and his body wide open to everything.
I didn't see Henry Cooper put Clay down in their first fight in London, but I'd like to bet Clay was coming off the ropes when he got caught with left hook.
I certainly saw that German southpaw, Mildenberger, bang him good in the corner, and that was when Mildenberger had been battered into a hopeless, beat-up hulk in the 10th round. Clay did not appreciate that punch one bit, but if Mildenberger had known enough to send it over when he was fresh, I figure Clay would have appreciated it a whole lot less.
Sure, Clay's got fancy feet in the middle of the ring, faster even than Billy Conn or Bob Pastor, two of the quickest men who ever gave me the run-around till I caught up. But Clay wastes his footwork, stumbling around like Conn and Pastor never did, from where I was looking.
There's a couple of other things about Clay. He drops his left hand when he should be protecting that pretty face he's always talking about. Doing a fool thing like that in a championship fight, he could end up looking like a meat wagon, or maybe riding in one.
Dropping your left hand ain't healthy. It was a weakness of my own till Max Schmeling taught me the hard was in our first fight.
If I were fighting Clay, I would start licking him at least five weeks before the bell, right in training camp...some place like my old stand at Pompton Lakes.
There wouldn't be too much of the fancy fixin's and show-biz routines they give you in the gymnasiums these days, but there sure would be some murder going on. I never fooled around in workouts.
I would pay top wages for the five fastest sparring partners I could buy. I would need quick targets to speed up my hands for a past opponent like Clay, and I would feel real sorry for those boys by the time we were through.
Clay has his own ideas about sparring. Me, too. There would be no horsing around. I never did pull punches with sparmates. Fighting was my business, and a man shouldn't play games in business hours. If I were training to whip Clay, my partners would go home bruised and busted up round the body, even from big gloves. Anyone who couldn't take it would be out, long before fight night.
And if I was boss in camp, I'd aim to be boss in the ring, where the gloves come smaller. Any man who fights Clay's fight is crazy. With me, Clay would have to fight a Joe Louis fight, my way, all the way. Which means I would go in to outpunch him rather than try to outbox him. I once thought I could keep up with Billy Conn, and for a long time it didn't take.
I'd see to it that Clay did not stay in ring-center. Out there, I could be the Patsy on the wrong end of the punishment. No, he'd be hit into those ropes as near a corner as I could get him...someplace where, from all I've seen, he just does not know how to fight.
If he stayed on the ropes, he'd get hurt. Sooner or later he'd try to bounce off, and when he did he would get hurt more. That's what the fight game is all about.
I'd press him, bang him around, claw him, clobber him with all I had, cut down his speed, belt him around the ribs. I'd punish the body, where the pain comes real bad. I know; I can still feel the trip-hammers Rocky Marciano hit me with when he knocked me out when he was on his way up and I was on my way out.
Clay would have welts on his body like I did. He would ache, like I did. His mouth would shut tight against the pain, and there would be tears burning his eyes. It is not very funny being under fire from bodypunches, and it wouldn't help Clay any looking for his trainer, Angelo Dundee, to come riding into the ring with the rescue posse.
Those guys in the corner fight good during the intervals, but they can't give you any more fists or any more heart when some guy's caving your ribs in.
"Kill the body and the head will die," Chappie used to tell me. It figures.
Sooner or later, I think Clay would get the message. Get it so good that he'd stop worrying about that face of his and drop his left hand like he did against Mildenberger and George Chuvalo. Those fellows got their openings by accident, and then fouled them up. I would work for it, and I wouldn't reckon to miss when it arrived.
If I goofed with a world title and a million dollars or so in the pot (plus all that television money these days), then I would not have any right to be in there with a smart fighter like Cassius Clay.
But only smart so far. Clay coming out of a corner all confused, busted up from body punches, would be a sucker for any opponent waiting for him with a shot in the locker. I'd be waiting, ready with something hot.
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11-11-2010, 04:10 PM
