does joe louis power realistically compare to other

Louise had some of the most hurtful looking KO's I've ever seen. You get the feeling that his opponents won't be the same.

 

a+.

 

Yes it does. There have been fighters who hit harder punch for punch (such as marciano or shavers) but he was a legitimate power puncher. The thing about louis is that he didn't look to take opponents out with one punch. He had great hand speed and was trained to punch in combination but I believe that if he wanted to he could have took out more opponents with a punch or 2.

There were harder punchers, sure, but louis could punch like hell. Anyone that could bust an artery or hit a fighter in the mouth so hard that their mouthpiece had to be cut out, or hit someone so hard that their spine was fractured, has to be recognized as having top-notch ko power. Many of Joe's foes were deathly afraid of him because of this.

 

Hey come on, splitting hairs is what we do in here!!!!

Regardless Shavers is a tad bigger for me in their big fights, tho the difference is small. Shavers is scary across the shoulders that's for sure, and reminds me somewhat of a tank. Real heavy build. Louis is more athletic, leaner etc.

Pretty sure Dinner met him as well, bouncing. Lucky buggers, a real champ is Earnie.

 

A rather high grade.

 

Louis is just poetry to watch there will never be another.

 

I see what you did there

 

No, the first two has to do with the ability to " land" a punch... Power has to do with the amount of pounds of pressure per square inch that a man is able to pack into a punch.

A zillion punches?

You mean like the time he knocked out Walcott with one punch in a single round, something that Louis couldn't do in a combined 26 rounds?

I don't see it.

He knocked out a prime Moorer with a one two combo. More than a lot of fighters have done.

Totally relevant,

Power is the last thing most fighters lose.. Mike Tyson, Sonny Liston, Lennox Lewis, Ernie Shavers all maintained most of their power well into their 30's, while Foreman even had it well into his 40's and with a career separated by 10 years of inactivity... Louis's ability to finish guys was gone by about age 34. Why? Because those other guys DIDN'T rely on speed, accuracy, timing and volume to finish their opponents... Louis did, and once that was gone, so were the knockouts... THIS IS MY ARGUMENT......

Totally relevant,

Statistics are not the end all be all, but they do give us something to work with... Otherwise all we're doing is speculating and picking favorites. As for how many knockouts foreman scored with a "single shot", my answer is probably very few, but realistically, most knockouts are not caused by a "single" shot... It doesn't mean that one guy doesn't hit harder than the other..

Foreman was in his freakin 40's and in a second career that was separated by a full decade from his first, yet consistantly knocking out men who were over 200 lbs, and not all of them were bums...And who did Louis KO in his last 10 fights? Lee Savold, a 36 year old euro fighter who was about the size of a modern day cruiserweight with 35 career loses, including 8 stoppages? How about the 17-8 Andy Walker? Can you name any others? Okay, well I'll give him Walcott, but even Jersey wasn't known necessarily for durability.....

Show me these fights and give a time frame at which the moments occur.

Well obviously the only way to know for sure is to take both of them and have each one hit you personally as hard as he could, and that isn't going to happen.. But I'd say that looking at statistics, size of men KO'd, what each guy did well into old age, etc,..etc is at least more to work with then just arbitrarily saying " well I don't think he was this or that.."

 

Louis certainly had a lot of power. Just look at how the other guy moved when he hit them! However, Louis fought with lighter 8 or 10 ounce gloves. Modern heavyweights wear 16 ounce gloves with extra padding in them. The lighter the glove, the more damage it can do when it lands, and the easier it is to create velocity in the shot.



Would Louis look as devastating with modern 16 ounce gloves, and modern mouth guards / gum shields designed to help absorb shots? I think modern equipment would take a little steam off his shots, but I would still rate him among the top 20 hardest punching heavyweights history with modern gear.

 

Shavers's punching power is way too exaggerated. His KO record against proper HW's (+215 pounds) is average at best: 11 KO's in 23 fights.
He's nowhere near the top 3 all time.
Once you ignore funny quotes and legends it turns out that Shavers was considered a dangerous KO'er based on KO'ing mainly cruisers and nobodies.

 

Shavers is nowhere near the top 3 all time, let alone the best.

 

I don't think that KO% is a reliable indicator of power, or that a heavyweight's size is a reliable indicator of their durability.

Funny quotes and legends become compelling, when everybody is saying exactly the same thing!

 

Yea, but the interesting part is the fact that most of the top HW's who say Shavers is the hardest puncher ended up beating Shavers. Thus when they praise him they also praise themselves for withstanding his punches and beating him.

 

You know that Rocky Marciano wanted to be a Major League Baseball Player, before taking up boxing. Joe Louis was a very accurate deadly puncher, sure he hit the canvas before, but bottom line, he got up to kayo his opponents. He did nothing fancy, he shuffled most of the time, just biding his time to strike with knockout power with his combinations. A great World Heavyweight Champion who held the title from 1937- 1949. His reign kinds of reminds us of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's reign as U. S. President, 1933-1945. Louis had 22 title defense and gave everybody a chance, it was not about money like today. And this was during a bad time in our history, The Great Depression. He also did his part in World War II, in the U.S. Army, entertaining the troops. But like a lot of athletes of that era, he was taken advantage of financially, he had a big heart. His income taxes were not paid after his bouts, which led to comeback losses to Ezzard Charles, in 1950 and Rocky Marciano, in 1951. A great individual and champion.

 

There are some exceptions.

Young for example beat Foreman but lost to Shavers.