The chins of our two favorite Louises (Lewises): Joe Louis vs Lennox Lewis

Lewis took plenty of good shots in his career.

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Rahman might not have stopped any other notable fighters with one shot but he caught Lewis about as flush as you can catch someone with his full weight behind the shot. While it's embarrassing that Lewis got caught by it in the first place, it's far from embarrassing that he dropped from it. Rahman could really punch.

 

Nobody can dispute this intelligently

 

I never said Lewis had a "Glass Chin", but, he clearly did not have an "Iron Chin" like McCall, Tyson, or Mercer did.

 

I'd argue Louis never took the sort of shots Lewis took, so the fact he was never dropped like that is sort of by the by. What's far more telling is the type of punchers that hurt Louis, namely Conn, Braddock, Schmeling and Galento, none of whom are historically huge punchers, and only one of whom would be considered a heavyweight today (and an obese one). The Conn incident is especially embarrassing, a smallish LHW that managed to badly stun and nearly stop the heavyweight champion of the world. Lewis was hurt by smaller fighters (Holyfield stunned him) but he was never hurt by anyone below 200lbs to my knowledge.

 

I'm not saying he had an iron chin either. That's just the name of the video, which I can't do anything about. The point was to show that he took a lot of hard shots in his day and took them well. He wasn't risk averse, or panicky under fire, and almost always recovered from stunning shots well enough to work his way back into the fight. You could also argue that he perhaps fought the greatest number of punchers of any heavyweight in history, certainly more than Louis.

 

"Louis" is ambiguous. Can be pronounced either loowis or loowee.

Lewis FTW.

 

Lewis is the only, repeat only top ten heavyweight, who was ever stopped by a single punch, anywhere close to his prime.

Yes it is absolutely embarrassing that Rahman was able to put him away so easily, and frankly I see nothing else in Rahman's record, to suggest that he was some sort of dynamite puncher.

Rahman was a punishing hitter, but there are punchers like that in every era.

You attack Louis for punches that didn't even take him off is feet, while trivializing Lewis getting knocked spark out!

Don't you see how perverse that logic is?

 

Since he pronounced it Loowis, I think that we can safely go with that, unless you think that he was mistaken?

 

I'm not referring to how he himself pronounced it, but how it can be pronounced. Is King Louis XVI of France not pronounced the other way?

 

I'm not trivialising it, but if you're going to get knocked sparkers by a single punch then there aren't many better candidates. Rahman didn't achieve the same feat against any other noted heavyweights because he didn't have the delivery mechanism, but when he was able to unload on someone he generally got great results.

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Note the unofficial knockdown of Tua and the one hit knockdown of Sanders, a man who took a storm of punishment from a prime Vitali without going down.

Lewis did everything possible to take the full brunt of Rahman's shot. He got caught against the ropes turning side on, so he wasn't able to brace or roll with the shot in any way. Rahman also got his full weight behind it and caught Lewis flush on the jaw. Very difficult to land a better KO punch than that.

Lewis should feel embarrassed getting stopped by an opponent on Rahman's level, but not by not being able to get up from the shot Rahman landed on him. Might as well blame Holmes for dropping from Shavers's shot.

 

Lewis didnt have a glass chin but holyfield, tyson, Tua would never have been KOd with one punch without being beaten to a pulp first. Lewis had an ordinary, vulnerable chin but obviously not something that held him back from becoming an ATG.

 

Lewis actually got up from the McCall KD but the referee waved it off. It was the first time Lewis had been down and he perhaps got up a shade too early for his own good, since the unsteadiness of his legs led to the ref making that call (correctly). Had he taken his time to get some more of his bearings before rising he might have been fit to continue. Maybe not, as well. Impossible to say. There's room for mitigating circumstances is all I'm saying.

The Rahman shot was just a hellacious shot right on the button. It's completely unfair to label anyone's chin negatively based on that.

 

Like i said it wasnt a glass chin. It was an ordinary chin....definitely nothing special especially for his size. Maybe better than david price, worse than evander holyfield or mike tyson, small guys who you almost had to beat to death to get them off their feet. Its to his credit that he never took a beating in a way that would have told us more about his chin, but holyfield for example(a much smaller man) hurt him with a single punch more than once if I recall correctly

 

Louis had a JMM-style chin (in other words, IMO, elite). You could maybe catch him off-balance due to his methodically effective but predictable and not particularly fancy or quick footwork, but keeping him down was another matter entirely.

Recuperative ability factors into what in boxing we dub "chin", more than many are willing to admit. Suffering a lot of knockdowns shouldn't weigh heavily against you in this conversation unless it correlates to also suffering a lot of stoppage losses.

Lewis is a bona fide ATG with a shaky chin.

Louis is an even greater ATG with a perfectly solid chin, all things considered. He could be dropped, yes, but that hardly matters unless you're keeping him down or scrambling his circuits to where he is hurt badly enough you could say he is "stunned" or facing a decrease in motor skills in the immediate aftermath of getting hit. And in his prime, unless you're Max freaking Schmeling, you're not doing any of that.

 

Saying that somebody did not stop many noted heavyweights because they lacked delivery, is just another way of saying that they were not an exceptional puncher.

Power alone will not guarantee success at world level.

Rahman was a punishing hitter for sure, but he was not in the category of Tua, Ruddock, Bruno, or Baer or Galento for that matter.

I very much doubt that Louis never took a shot like that in his 70 fight career.