Max Baer's "style" dissected

A motivated Baer was a bigger, rougher fighter than Louis, and probably hit harder. That would account for some of Herr Max's ring wear, I think.

I would rate Max Schmeling very, very close to Joe Frazier.

 

But in fairness to Frazier, it was one really good fist.

 

You'll get no arguments from me. Schmeling rates only a shade under the two giants of the black-and-white era, Ali and Louis. He was arguably better than Liston or Marciano. About on Frazier's level.

 

Dempsey? Hm. Irony of ironies, Herr Max the (supposed, and incorrectly accused) "Nazi" didn't draw the color line. In fact, he gave the most spectacular example on record of not drawing the color line when he beat Louis into the canvas. Schmeling also got the better of Sharkey. Those two factors, combined with his record against other contenders, put him above Dempsey in my book. Dempsey just lost too much of his fire after he got the title. Dempsey was a spectacular fighter, and incredibly talented. But he didn't have the record that Max assembled. The story would be different if he'd beaten Wills. (Or even Greb if we're not being picky...)

Tunney didn't have enough heavyweight fights to rank him above Schmeling. He certainly ranks higher in a P4P sense.

Johnson and Jeffries I group separately. The combination of bad film quality, divergent ruleset, and a couple other factors make them hard to compare directly with Louis, Schmeling, et al.

Marciano beat a similar level of opposition to Schmeling. He has the undefeated record. Both Marciano and Schmeling have solid lower-end champions on their resumes (Walcott, a fading Charles, Sharkey), and both beat great contenders. The Louis fight is the difference. It's hard to overstate the significance of Schmeling's victory there. Schmeling owns the single greatest win that any heavyweight ever scored. It beats out Frazier's FOTC, which is the keystone that cemented Frazier's status. I think that it might be just enough to edge out Marciano. It's close, though.

 

This is a fair point, but I prefer to go on a combination of resume and what I see on film. Contemporaries' opinions are worth something in that analysis, but aren't privileged. These are the same contemporaries who rated Dempsey far above Louis.

Also bear in mind that I'm talking accomplishments here. Dempsey was supremely talented. I never disputed that. But he didn't prove it against the best available, and Schmeling did. Them's the breaks.

This doesn't say much. Fighters rarely claim they're better than their immediate predecessors. Schmeling certainly wouldn't, since he was a relatively humble guy who needed to tap into a US market that still idolized Dempsey.

Dempsey knocked Sharkey out while Sharkey was complaining to the ref about a blatant low blow. Before that, Sharkey had been winning comfortably. You could argue that Dempsey was old, and I agree. This fight didn't mean much either way.

By contrast, Max's decision loss against Sharkey was generally considered pretty bad judging.

Yes. But that doesn't change the fact that Schmeling beat all comers -- including the GOAT -- while Dempsey didn't.

Dempsey has some valid excuses for not fighting Wills. Granted. Those excuses put Dempsey in a better place morally, but they don't change his record.

 

Here is the film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0RLqeVfxo8

Sharkey's complaining to the ref when Dempsey knocks him out (of a fight that Sharkey had been winning solidly). The punch looks low. Either way, this isn't the impressive victory you're claiming for Dempsey.

We can still see the fighters on film, and we shouldn't accept this stuff on completely on faith. We're not talking about motionless newspaper accounts here. You've also neglected to mention that a lot of Schmeling's fights were on better-quality film, even if Dempsey's weren't.

You're acting as if the only two options are accepting contemporary opinions uncritically, or totally abandoning them. I'm saying that you need to balance expert opinions against film and -- most importantly -- records.

On film, I can see Schmeling demolishing the greatest fighter in history and making it look easy. On paper, I can see that Schmeling's record outside of the Louis win was at least as impressive as Dempsey's. Schmeling beat the better fighters, and he looks very good on film.

Yeah, but they claimed that Dempsey was a better fighter and champion than Louis, not that he'd win H2H. Those are very different propositions, and there's no way to rate Dempsey's reign higher than Louis's overall.