Joe Louis Not Great

[Kid Achilles]

This is ridiculous. I could tear into George Foreman even worse if I felt like wasting the energy. Who did Foreman ever beat besides Frazier? An undersized Frazier, and Norton, an overrated fighter who's only claim to fame was having the style to beat a past it Ali and give Holmes a tough fight. Speaking of Holmes, he was another overrated champion with a long reign in a weak era who never really beat anyone worth mentioning anyway.

This is fun!

[SABBATH]

so why dont you get your story straight then we'll talk but untill then actually go watch a fight or two before you post

Will do once you return to your day job of flipping burgers and cleaning toilets...

[joeytrimble]

see now you gotta start assumeing and wishing your own nightmarror of a life onto me ...come on man you have ozzy "i do pepsi comericals and get in 4 wheeler wrecks to make the news" osborn in your icon

grow up and learn some boxing before you come into this section because nobody is gonna buy this crap and your lucky rockin isnt around becuase he'd prolly take your ass to school too

[K-DOGG]

The article is so idiotic it does not deserve a rebutle from myself other than to attest to it's idiocy.

[K-DOGG]

see now you gotta start assumeing and wishing your own nightmarror of a life onto me ...come on man you have ozzy "i do pepsi comericals and get in 4 wheeler wrecks to make the news" osborn in your icon

grow up and learn some boxing before you come into this section because nobody is gonna buy this crap and your lucky rockin isnt around becuase he'd prolly take your ass to school too

joey...he didn't write it. And, trust me, Sabbath is one of the more knowledgeable posters on here. I know.

[SABBATH]

This is ridiculous. I could tear into George Foreman even worse if I felt like wasting the energy. Who did Foreman ever beat besides Frazier? An undersized Frazier, and Norton, an overrated fighter who's only claim to fame was having the style to beat a past it Ali and give Holmes a tough fight. Speaking of Holmes, he was another overrated champion with a long reign in a weak era who never really beat anyone worth mentioning anyway.

This is fun!

Are you not the same guy that was singing the praises of Jack Roper a couple of months ago? Now that was funny!

[butterfly1964]

I didn't write this.

JOE LOUIS
WHERE DOES HE BELONG IN THE PANTHEON OF GREAT HEAVYWEIGHTS?
NOT AMONG THE BEST IF ONE IS OBJECTIVE ABOUT IT

Ezzard Charles, one of the few fighters Joe Louis faced with a good record (58-5-1), beat Louis badly. Charles won their only match on rounds by wide margins. How wide? 10-5, 13-2, and 12-3. According to The New York Times, “Charles pounded Joe Louis into a bleeding helpless hulk.” The Brown Bomber’s “face battered out of shape under the pummeling…, his left eye closed, his right eye sporting a lump, his nose bleeding, his lips cut and bruised,” Ezzard “hammered Louis as he pleased, punched Joe around the ring as if he were an inanimate punching bag, outboxed, outfought, outmaneuvered” the former champion. Charles did everything but knock out Louis, and he was close to doing that in the 14th round. Louis was not even considered competitive by the experts at ring side so one-side was the beating he took from Charles.

Louis stood nearly 6’2” and weighed 218 lbs for the fight, whereas Charles stood 6’0” and only weighed 184 lbs. Why was Charles so light for a heavyweight title fight? Because two years earlier, Charles was fighting as a light heavyweight. Only a few years before that, he was a middleweight. He had nine fights at heavyweight, and 184 lbs was the most he had ever weighed for a boxing match. You may be thinking “wasn’t Michael Spinks a light heavyweight before he faced Larry Holmes?” Yes. But Spinks was 6’3”, weighed 200 lbs, and was the undefeated light heavyweight champion of the world. He had in fact never lost a score card in a fight. Holmes was 6’3” and weighed 221 lbs – only three more pounds than Louis – and he was the same age as Louis. There was 34 lbs difference between Charles and Louis. And Larry lost to Spinks by a narrow margin, with scores of 142-145 (twice) and 142-143. Louis was practically shut out on two of the cards in his fight with Charles.

There is more to the story. While Spinks showed himself to be a durable fighter (he had never been knocked off his feet), Charles had a dented chin. He had been knocked down eight times by Lloyd Marshall (39-6-2) before the referee finally called a halt to the contest, awarding the fight to Marshall. Both Charles and Marshall weighed below the light heavyweight limit for that fight. And in a previous fight, Charles lost to Jimmy Bivins (31-5) after being floored seven times. Both Charles and Bivins were also under the light heavyweight limit. Charles would be floored in three more fights on the way to the heavyweight title. That comes to 18 knockdowns! Louis is reckoned by most to be one of the all-time greatest punchers and held to be one of the most deadly accurate punchers of all heavyweights. Yet he could not put away his much smaller rival. It wasn’t that he couldn’t hit Charles. Charles did not leave the ring unmarked. It’s that Louis had no answer to a boxer of Charles’ caliber. He couldn’t do what Marshall and Bivins had done: put Charles on his backside.

To get more perspective on the age issue, consider that at 36 years of age, Larry Holmes stopped David Bey (233 lbs, 14-0), and defeated Carl Williams (215 lbs, 16-0), in back-to-back fights. And just shy of his 38th birthday, Lennox Lewis stopped 6’7” 248 lbs Vitali Klitshko (32-1). It was Lewis’ third fight since turning 36. His two previous opponents? Hasim Rahman (236 lbs, 35-2) and Mike Tyson (234 lbs, 49-3). He won both of those fights by knockout. How could these champions perform so well at advanced ages (Holmes continued to win fights into his 50s and arguably won his rematch with Spinks) against legitimate heavyweight contenders, yet Louis was nearly shut out by a talented light heavyweight?

And there is even more to the story. For as talented as Charles was, he had not faced much real heavyweight competition. Indeed, he had faced only journeymen and light heavyweights in defense of his NBA heavyweight title. Consider his opposition: Freddie Beshore (184 lbs, 28-7-1), Pat Valentino (188 lbs, 45-10-4), Gus Lesnevich (182 lbs, 59-13-5), and Jersey Joe Walcott (195 lbs, 44-13-2). The fight that put him in line for the NBA title was a points win over another light heavyweight, Joey Maxim (184 lbs, 63-15-4). So, in truth, the full sized all-time great heavyweight Joe Louis couldn’t whip a light heavyweight with a dented chin and with very little heavyweight experience. And Charles never proved himself to be anything close to a great heavyweight or really even a very good one. Following his victory over Louis, Charles posted a poor record at heavyweight of 28 wins and 20 losses, 6 of those losses inside the distance, and most of his conquerors were journeymen and trailhorses. Strange, then, that Charles didn’t just whip Louis but completely outclassed him.

Of course people will write the loss off as an old, out-of-shape Louis losing to the fine light heavyweight (some will even claim the greatest light heavyweight ever, but this is hyperbole given the existence of light heavyweights Michael Spinks and Bob Foster). But an examination of Louis’ career reveals few significant wins, several close calls, many controversial wins, and a devastating knockout loss. In other words, the loss to Charles was not unexpected provided one had objectively studied Louis’ record. Indeed, the only conclusion one can come to in such an examination is that the Brown Bomber is vastly overrated and doesn’t warrant inclusion in an all-time top 10 list.


JOURNEYMEN AND TRAILHORSES

Even though Jersey Joe Walcott (6’0”, 194 lbs) faced Louis the first time with a very poor record (44-11-2 – he had won only three-quarters of his fights against mediocre competition), he put quite a scare into the Louis camp. He floored Louis twice and by most accounts outpointed him. However, the popular Louis was awarded a split decision. On the 10-point must system, which was to be used in the event of a draw, Walcott was judged the winner. On rounds, the dissenting judge gave the fight to Walcott 6-2-7. The match was so controversial that hearings were held. The dispute revolved around the card of Frank Forbes, who gave more points to Walcott, but wrote on the back of his card that Louis was the winner. In the end the State Athletic Commission denied Walcott the reversal he was seeking. Instead, they gave him a rematch. Louis, The New York Times reporter wrote, “is in a position where he finds it necessary to redeem himself, a novel role for the paralyzing puncher who waded through twenty-three pretenders to his title before running into the stumbling block presented by the 34-year-old ring-worn Walcott.” What’s that? Twenty-three “pretenders”? A “34-year-old ring-worn Walcott”? Louis hid from the press and the public following the fight, the NYTimes said, because he was “aware of the sorry spectacle he made of himself.” The paper described his performance as a “floundering, stumbling, futile picture.” Louis had “wallowed” though the fight. Not exactly the language one expects when talking about an all-time great heavyweight champion.

In the rematch, Walcott again floored Louis and was winning on two of the cards (5-4 and 6-3), but he got cute and Louis knocked him out in the 11th. Walcott claimed that the referee sabotaged his strategy by telling him to fight, which was not, evidently, in Walcott’s game plan. It is quite likely that had it not been for Walcott’s uncharacteristic aggressiveness he would have sailed to an easy victory. On the other hand, knocking out Walcott was not that difficult of a feat. He had been knocked out three times before facing Louis. Tiger Jack Fox, a light heavyweight, knocked Walcott out with a single shot in the eighth round. In his third loss inside the distance, Abe Simon (24-5) knocked out Walcott in the sixth round. And Walcott was, after all, a now 35-year-old ring-worn fighter. What is more, Walcott dropped decisions to fighters he had no business losing to. One fighter who whipped him had a record of 8-12. Another conqueror had a record of 19-20-4. And these losses were not early in Walcott’s career. Walcott lost to light heavyweight Joey Maxim (40-12-1) and lost to Charles twice (by large margins of 77-73, 78-72, 78-72 and 80-70, 84-66, 83-67). He also lost to Rex Layne, a crude slugger, by wide margins (6-2, 6-3, and 6-3). All this was before he became champion of the world (by defeating guess who? Ezzard Charles).

i was gonna do this, but sabbath beat me to it.

[BKM-]

You are a perfect example of a young and ignorant poster who doesn't take the time to learn of the very topic he staunchly debates. A few threads ago you didn't know who Corrie Sanders was and needed to see pictures to be reminded of who Julio Ceasar Chavez and Wilfredo Gomez were. How the hell can anyone take your opinions serious?

That doesn't have ANYTHING to do with this because i know enough about Louis, not about Chavez etc. Listen homer, when a guy writes nothing but negative stuff about a great fighter like Louis and even says that he's ''too dumb'' to be a great fighter, how the **** do you take that garbage serious? Now, are you gonna talk about things that i've said in other topics again?

[BKM-]

Who the hell but YOU takes this article serious? That explains your ignorance. The fact that you can't see that he's biased piece of **** full of hate is beyond me.

This thread is a joke, like your boy Ozzy.

[K-DOGG]

Who the hell but YOU takes this article serious? That explains your ignorance. The fact that you can't see that he's biased piece of **** full of hate is beyond me.

This thread is a joke, like your boy Ozzy.

Heyyyy!! Lay off Ozzy!